Leaving a bewildered Piar behind, I turned and walked toward the back of the hall. I stopped in front of someone and spoke to him.

"I'm feeling terrible. Could you show me to the infirmary?"

I clutched my stomach and looked to him for help.

Piar watched the two of them leave the hall, thoroughly confused. One was the duke's son, who had appeared out of nowhere, greeted him, and immediately left. The other was a female teacher who had been directing people. He had no idea what was going on. Then again, everything about his coming to this school and taking the freshman oath had been astonishing. Perhaps he could chalk this up to one more strange occurrence.

"I just have to keep my head, like Master said."

He did not know where his master came from, or even where he was now. But just as Master had said, Piar had found himself standing alongside nobles. All he could do was trust his words and press on.

It was Master who had awakened him and his older cousin, though they had been ordinary commoners, and taught them how to use their abilities. Master had told them about the academy and taught them how to deal with nobles and other people. Thanks to him, Piar had come here and been chosen to take the freshman oath as the commoners' representative. He had since learned that some commoners could awaken without his master's help, but that did not mean he could forget what Master had done for him and his cousin.

'He told us to keep it an absolute secret that he awakened us.'

Master had left their village after warning them that if other nobles found out, he might be in danger—and so might they. Piar and his cousin fully intended to heed that warning. Coming here had made him realize all over again how extraordinary awakening was. He would have kept the secret even without Master's warning.

'But why did the duke's son come looking for me?'

While Piar tilted his head over that question, the student sitting beside him was preoccupied with another and muttered to himself.

"Was there an Alex among the Duke of Gresia's children?"

Unfortunately, the entrance ceremony began just then, and his muttering went unheard.

* * *

"Is your stomach bothering you that badly?"

"I'm sorry. I'm having trouble holding out."

"If it's that bad, a priest at the infirmary can heal you. You'll feel better in no time."

The staff member taking me there—no, the teacher—looked as unwell as I supposedly felt.

Of course, I was faking it, so I felt fine. But unless she was a kind teacher worried about me, there was no reason for her to look so distressed. Her eyes darted uneasily, and she kept glancing back at the ceremony hall. Whatever was troubling her, it wasn't concern for me. Still, my last death had shown me why she was acting that way, so I wasn't about to say anything.

"Ugh... By the way, may I ask your name?"

"Oh, you're Alex, aren't you? I'm Isidora, a lecturer in the liberal arts department."

The ordinary-looking woman in her early thirties answered me. A commoner. And a lecturer, not a full teacher. She was the one who had made Piar explode moments ago.

At the instant Piar exploded a second time in the ruined ceremony hall, I had looked at everyone there. When the hall exploded, there had been too many people for me to check them all. But there were hardly any people near that second blast: a priest and priestesses, a few staff members, the injured—and the teacher walking beside me now.

She had left the hall just before it exploded and returned after the attack. She was covered in black ash, but I couldn't see a single injury. At the time, I hadn't suspected her at all. She had been at the back of the hall, so she could have gotten out first, and it was only natural for a teacher to rush back to rescue people after an attack. Nor had I thought it strange when she went around looking for survivors.

But when Piar arrived, my eyes and senses picked out something different about her as I scanned the area. She spotted him before anyone else did, then looked around and moved away from the scene. I began watching her. Once she had put some distance between herself and the others, I felt a brief surge of mana from her body. At the same time, mana surged from Piar's body, and he exploded again. And so I died once more.

If there had been more people around, or if she hadn't moved so far away, I never would have noticed it. I also understood why everyone with an inherited ability had died. The instant Piar exploded, I had felt the mana I'd gathered vanish. No—it was more as if Piar had sucked it in. Apparently, his ability used not only his own mana but all the mana around him to cause the explosion.

It was a terrifying ability. The more people with powerful mana nearby, the bigger the explosion; meanwhile, those with abilities lost their mana and couldn't stop it. Ordinary people had no way to stop it in the first place. An inherited ability designed to target people with abilities, carried by someone who didn't even know he was a bomb. Inherited abilities were more varied—and more frightening—than I'd thought.

After a few more exchanges as we walked, the infirmary building came into view.

"I need to get back to the entrance ceremony, so I can't stay with you. I'll tell the priests you're here. Get some rest, and come back to the hall when you're feeling better. Otherwise, I'll come find you when it's over."

Well, that was a problem. I looked around. There was hardly anyone on the path, and no one was watching this spot. Okay.

"M-Miss, w-wait a moment."

I groaned and grabbed her arm.

"Are you all right?"

Startled, she caught hold of me. I drew her closer, panting.

"Huh?"

She stared at me in surprise. I put my hand on her stomach as I pulled her against me.

THUD

Mana burst from my hand and struck her stomach, then swept through her body.

"Why...?"

Isidora stared at me, wide-eyed, then closed her eyes. She wasn't dead, merely unconscious.

She wasn't an ordinary commoner teaching liberal arts. She had an inherited ability. But unless she was a physically gifted ability-user who could wield mana, she stood no chance against a surprise attack from someone with knight-level physical abilities and years of training. The mana I'd honed over the course of several deaths tore through her insides, and the shock overwhelmed her.

"You shouldn't have let your guard down."

I whispered that absurd advice in her unconscious ear, then supported her into the infirmary building. As I entered, I called out, "Help! This teacher is ill!"

Startled priestesses and a middle-aged priest hurried over.

I'd been watching priests perform healing since I was a baby. Between being poisoned, injured, and killed, I'd come to understand the abilities of this world's priests better than anyone. Their power didn't come from a god, nor was it the result of faith. It was simply an inherited ability, like those of the nobles. They hadn't inherited it from their parents as nobles did, but it was descended from the ability of a hero who had healed people during the Great War.

They were exceptionally good at treating injuries. But they hadn't detected the poison afflicting me as a baby, though an alchemist had, and they couldn't detect unconsciousness caused by a clash of mana either. Once we laid her down, the priest immediately placed a hand on her and used his healing ability, but she didn't wake.

"What happened?"

"She suddenly said she wasn't feeling well and wanted to rest for a while. I was nearby, so I came with her. But she fainted just outside."

"... You're a kind student."

The priest gave me a puzzled look. Apparently, he found it hard to understand why a teacher feeling ill at the entrance ceremony would need a student's help getting here.

But he had no way to check my story here. Besides, I really was a kind student—just in a different way.

"Her breathing seems steady, and I don't see anything else wrong. What should we do...?"

The priests clearly knew their healing abilities couldn't fix everything.

"And you need to get back to the ceremony. You should go on ahead—"

"I'll bring another member of staff," I said, cutting him off before he could finish.

"... That would be best."

After a moment's thought, the priest nodded. His relationship with the school seemed to make him reluctant to go to the ceremony hall himself.

I rested a hand on her shoulder, looking concerned. "Please get some rest."

After confirming once more that her mana was tangled, I took my hand away and left the infirmary.

I headed for the ceremony building, walked briskly inside, and checked the people standing at the back of the hall. The ceremony had begun, and everyone was absorbed in it. As I entered, someone who looked like a staff member approached me.

"Where's Instructor Isidora? She went with you, didn't she?"

I studied him. An ordinary man in his twenties. Was he simply a staff member who had seen her leave with me, or was he working with her? I couldn't tell yet. I could tell that he had no mana. He was an ordinary person, not someone with an inherited ability.

I didn't answer his question. "I'm sorry. There's something else I need to do first."

With that brief apology, I walked over to someone else.

"Could I speak with you for a moment?"

The senior royal knight who had accompanied the princess gave me a curious look, but he didn't brush me off. He was one of the royal knights' senior members, and Queen Ria, the princess's mother, had introduced him to me as one of the pillars of her faction.

Her request that I help the princess while we attended the academy hadn't ended with words alone. Naturally, I'd also been introduced to the butler who attended the princess, the knights who guarded her, and finally Senior Knight Noaro, one of the faction's principal military assets. He had judged my level of skill at a glance. He was every bit a senior royal knight.

"What is it?"

He moved discreetly into a corner and asked me in a low voice. His words hummed around my ears, while the sounds of the ceremony ahead became almost inaudible. He was using mana to block the sound.

"There's someone I suspect of terrorism."

His face hardened. "The teacher who left with you?"

He had been keeping a close watch on his surroundings, just as I'd expected. To think even someone like him had been killed along with the rest...

"Yes. Instructor Isidora. I think she's connected to what happened to House Hierro. I had my suspicions, so I used stomach pain as an excuse to go to the infirmary with her and pressed her a little. She took the bait. I knocked her out and left her in the infirmary."

She probably had nothing to do with House Hierro, but I couldn't think of another plausible explanation.