Only overturned earth, uprooted trees, and soil hardened like glass remained where Yuto had vanished.

Calipha stood motionless, staring at the spot. She was seeing it with her own eyes, yet it felt unreal. She could not believe that the one who had left those horrific traces was a mere fifteen-year-old boy from the slums, one who had not even contracted with a constellation. She felt that way despite having witnessed not just the aftermath, but Yuto’s entire battle.

The mask of an insecure girl fell away. Her shoulders stopped trembling. Her stammer vanished.

The woman standing here now was not Calipha Rudrock, a timid fifteen-year-old noble girl. She was Calipha Asward, a Black Mage who had lived a hundred years, and the leader of their organization, Dark Star.

‘He cut through a constellation’s light.’

Calipha replayed what she had witnessed. He had cut through flames, shattered earth, split wind, and vaporized ice. With a single sword, he had faced all that violence imbued with the constellations’ power.

And that was not all. He had met power injected directly by a constellation, power beyond what its vessel’s body could withstand—divine authority itself—and cleaved it in two.

‘And that was nothing more than aether?’

Aether was a fundamental element that made up this world. Only nobles could be chosen by constellations, but anyone with the innate aptitude could wield aether, regardless of status. Their skill in wielding it also varied enormously according to their natural gifts.

But even that had its limits. Calipha herself was an archmage who had devoted a hundred years to magic. She could wield countless spells, and over that long span she had seen countless people.

Yet even she had never seen aether as powerful as Yuto’s. That pitch-black aether fell outside the bounds of the aether she had spent a century studying.

Darkness that cut through, swallowed, and vaporized the constellations’ light. Power that directly denied and destroyed their divine authority. A fifteen-year-old boy possessed the kind of power Calipha had devoted her entire life to researching without ever attaining.

‘And that swordsmanship...’

Calipha was a mage, but she was not ignorant of the sword. Yuto’s swordsmanship was not flashy. Nor was it laden with elaborate technique. Yet every move brimmed with killing intent. He read the uncanny sword paths directed by the constellations, found openings, and finished his opponents without the slightest hesitation.

His was swordsmanship honed by killing real people on the battlefield.

‘He spent only a week in Oltea’s colosseum. Could three years as an adventurer after that really have brought him to this level?’

If that were truly possible, every student seeking admission to Maria Academy was a fucking idiot. Everything they had learned from sword instructors at home amounted to nothing.

The only explanation for all this was that Yuto was a genius born with truly unbelievable talent. Talent so outrageous it felt downright absurd.

‘No... Even talent... has limits. This... This makes no sense.’

Shiro had told her about Yuto’s past. To Calipha, Shiro’s words were no different from a decree of heaven. Yet when it came to Yuto, she could not unconditionally believe that Shiro was right. There seemed to be something within Yuto that no fifteen-year-old boy could contain. Otherwise, none of it made sense.

‘What... are you?’

Calipha looked down at the hand she had shaken Yuto’s with. His warmth still lingered. The feel of his hand remained vivid, too.

It had been rough and callused—the hand of someone who never stopped training.

["Calipha."]

As she gazed down at her hand for a moment, a voice rang inside her head. Cold, gentle, and absolute. The instant she heard it, Calipha shuddered as though an electric shock had run through her.

["L-Lord Shiro."]

Calipha prostrated herself, bowing her head.

["Tell me about Yuto."]

Calipha blinked at the words that followed. Lord Shiro’s telepathy itself was no surprise. A secret channel constructed through magic linked the two of them.

What surprised her was the timing. Immediately after Yuto had vanished. Before she had even prepared her report. Moving only her eyes, Calipha looked up at the sky. Shiro’s position was close to here.

‘Lord Shiro watched Yuto’s battle himself.’

Yet he was asking her about Yuto.

‘He’s in a hurry.’

Calipha sensed how unusual this was. Shiro Ristal was not a man who hurried. His way was to plan everything, wait, and reap the rewards when the time came.

She could not remember him ever initiating a question like this—much less so urgently.

‘Using me in the first place was unusual.’

Calipha was a card Shiro kept hidden. She did not even belong to Eclipse. Normally, their arrangement was for Calipha to work in the shadows on her own initiative, rather than at Shiro’s command.

But in an exception to that rule, Shiro had sought to use her.

For something involving Yuto.

["Lord Shiro. Perhaps it would be better for me to compile a detailed report after the exam..."]

["Tell me now."]

Brief and firm. Calipha trembled, then bowed her head even lower.

["Yuto is... strong. Despite lacking a constellation’s protection, he confronts their divine authority head-on."]

["I saw that."]

There was a smile in Shiro’s voice, but beneath it lay a blade’s sharpness.

["And you know I did. Don’t make me repeat my question."]

Calipha swallowed hard. Shiro was not even standing before her, yet she could feel his gaze. Calm, gentle, and warm—or rather, cold and composed.

* * *

Shiro stood still and listened to Calipha’s report.

He heard everything: what Yuto had done since entering this space, how he had conducted himself, what orders he had given Calipha, and what conversations they had shared.

He had tried to avoid unnecessary killing, then immediately changed tactics the moment he judged killing to be practical. Shiro liked that flexibility.

He had correctly identified how to use Calipha despite her lack of combat ability. Distrusting her, he had tested her repeatedly, but once convinced that he could trust her for the time being, he had made active use of her.

Despite possessing overwhelming strength compared to the other students, he had focused on ambushes rather than direct combat. Disregarding pride entirely, he had steadfastly maintained the role of a hunter.

The one time Yuto had challenged someone head-on was when two boys had cornered a girl at a cliff and were tormenting her. Hearing that report, Shiro had smiled without realizing it. Though Yuto had consistently remained a coolheaded hunter pursuing practical advantage, in that moment he had acted emotionally.

‘As someone from the slums, he certainly harbors hatred for the nobility. The hostility he showed me at the banquet was real, too. But he doesn’t hate all nobles. His friendly relationship with House Marigold was genuine.’

Because he was a pauper who had endured the nobility’s contempt, he demanded high standards of them. Shiro had observed and sensed that since the banquet. Having spent his entire life being trampled by nobles unworthy of their station, he yearned all the more for nobles who lived up to it.

‘At the cliff, you went out of your way to give them choices. Even with the first boy you killed, you wanted to hear an answer that warranted his death.’

He had steered the boy into making his own words a contradiction that tightened around his throat.

‘You made the other two feel as though you had given them choices, but in reality you left only one outcome. They couldn’t choose. You created that situation.’

In that respect he resembled Shiro, but their emotions were not identical. Yuto had genuinely pitied the girl, without even judging whether she was a noble worthy of the name.

Why had he done that? Shiro knew the reason. Having formed some understanding of Yuto as a person, he was certain of the explanation that came to mind.

‘You pity the weak.’

Shiro’s fingertips trembled without his realizing it.

‘Even if they’re nobles you hate and despise. If they’re weak—especially if they’re wretched people oppressed by the strong, their dignity trampled—you feel compassion for them.’

Calipha’s report moved beyond the cliff, to when Yuto had opened his heart to her a little. To when, realizing that her disposition differed from that of the other insufferably arrogant nobles, he had spoken about Shiro.

["Yuto said he grew up in the slums of the Kingdom of Ristal. He said it was such a shitty place that he hated Ristal’s royal family. Apparently, he had never once felt the royal family’s kindness."]

So he had not told Calipha about the colosseum. That was understandable. From what Shiro had heard at the party, Yuto seemed deeply traumatized by his week in the colosseum and by being the sole survivor of Crimson Ringmistress.

His assessment of Ristal’s royal family was only natural, too. Shiro had never troubled himself with the realities of the slums or tried to care for them. The greater cause he pursued entailed many sacrifices. His way was to advance toward that cause rather than devote himself to such things as improving the slums.

["He said he dared to behave rudely when he first met you and Lady Shirin at the Marigold banquet. That he glared at you and bristled with hostility. But you—ah, merciful Lord Shiro—did not rebuke him. It seems that moved him deeply. He said that even though you stood above the nobility, you showed him neither prejudice nor contempt for being a pauper..."]

It was exactly the image Shiro had intended to present. He had been interested in Yuto and wanted to learn what sort of person he was. Wearing the mask of an ordinary noble would only earn him the same ordinary hatred. So Shiro had donned the mask of a benevolent prince, the kind the poor adored. It was a mask he used very often.

‘Ah...’

Shiro curled his trembling fingers into a fist. There was no need to listen closely to the rest of the report. The event that had begun when the sky turned red. The students who had come to hunt Yuto, the highest scorer. The moment the constellations, greedy for amusement, had seized the students’ bodies.

Yuto had been genuinely enraged. Given Shiro’s understanding of him, he could only have been furious in that situation. The insufferably arrogant nobles who looked down on the poor had been oppressed and stripped of their dignity by constellations standing far above them. Denied even death, they had become the constellations’ playthings, howling in pain.

Yuto hated nobles. But his compassion for the weak outweighed that hatred. No—no, that was wrong. It was not nobles Yuto hated. He hated the strong who refused to use their power for the weak, who wielded it solely for pleasure while despising those beneath them.

‘You...’

Shiro blinked, his eyes trembling.

‘You’re like me.’

Their methods were not alike. But the essential foundation of their beings, something deep within their hearts, the motive that drove them to act—that was alike.

"..."

Alike?

Shiro was surprised that he had felt someone was like him.

He had never felt that anyone resembled him. Shiro Ristal was unique. He had been born that way and lived that way. He had to be.

Shirin was his younger sister by blood, but she was not like him. Calipha was loyal, but that was all. The same held true of Eclipse. To Shiro, every being other than himself was someone to use according to their purpose and lead, not someone with whom to feel kinship.

Yet he felt kinship with Yuto.

‘He rejects the strong trampling the weak.’

That was Yuto’s motive. The fundamental force driving him as a person, which Shiro had discerned from Calipha’s report.

He grew angry when nobles scorned the poor. He grew angry when constellations turned humans into puppets. He grew angry when the strong trampled the dignity of the weak.

Shiro felt a kinship with that. His reason for rejecting the constellations. His reason for creating Eclipse, directing Calipha, and laying plans over long years. The same thing lay at the root of it all.

The constellations stood far above humanity, looking down upon the continent of Callisto. Shiro could not tolerate their using the lives of every being on this continent as a stage for their amusement, treating them as playthings.

‘Our methods... differ.’

Shiro sought to change the system itself, not help a single person before his eyes. He did not expend emotion on an individual’s suffering. Only that way could he change more.

But Yuto was different. Seeing a girl being tormented, he had stepped forward to confront her tormentors. Seeing students controlled by constellations, he had ground his teeth. That was an inefficient waste of emotion. For the sake of the greater cause, one could not react to every such thing.

Shiro rejected differences. Differences had no place within his embrace. They created friction and errors. Thus, differences had to be corrected, leaving only obedient followers in his embrace.

That was how it had always been, and how it had to remain.

Yet Shiro felt a powerful interest in Yuto, who was different from him.