Part 1: Frondier the Human Sloth (1)

The next day.

There was a small commotion during class.

“L-look at that...”

“No way...”

Everyone exchanged incredulous looks, whispering to one another and stealing glances at me.

“Frondier de Roach is...!”

Awake!

“...”

That was what every student’s eyes seemed to be saying.

Had you seriously never opened your eyes in class before, Frondier? That was impressive in its own way.

“W-well, if we look at the next slide...”

Even the teacher looked thoroughly flustered by the sight of me awake.

But I had no choice. Father had given his orders.

If I failed to rank in the top ten overall at Constel, I would be disowned.

Constel was the school... or academy... or school-like place I was currently attending.

Anyway, it was an educational institution of some sort.

While other schools generally focused on knowledge and culture, Constel combined those with combat training for fighting monsters. That made it a hell of a lot more demanding, and a hell of a lot harder.

You couldn’t just be good at studying. You had to excel as a combatant, too.

Only by doing exceptionally well in both could you make the top ten overall.

That task was far beyond Frondier.

Come to think of it, Frondier would vanish without a trace at some point during the game. I’d assumed he had simply been forgotten, but he must have been disowned.

Had he kept sleeping even knowing he would be disowned? Had he figured they wouldn’t actually go through with it?

The overall rankings combined written and practical scores.

With a body that had neither Divine Power nor any proper magic, I needed to score as high as possible on the written exams first. Of course I was paying attention in class.

Beating the game was my ultimate goal, of course, but my position in the Roach family mattered. Being disowned would be a problem.

Coming from a distinguished noble family was one of the few advantages this hopeless character, Frondier, possessed.

Without even that, clearing the game as him would become all the more impossible.

‘That aside...’

I was sleepy.

Drowsiness washed over me, impossible to shake off, as though Frondier’s habits and pathetic stamina had become my own. This body was always asleep at this hour.

Suddenly trying to pay attention in class was no easy feat. More importantly, I couldn’t make any sense of what was written on the board.

I was attending my first class after experiencing all this only through a game. Frondier had done nothing but sleep his damn way through school. In this situation, we were pretty much in the same boat.

‘... Let’s see.’

I remembered Frondier’s skill.

Weaving.

I wasn’t sure this would work, but I tried using it on what the teacher had written on the board.

The writing on the board entered my mind with perfect clarity, exactly as it was.

Even without understanding the material, I could store it intact, as though I had taken a photograph.

‘At least it’s good for this.’

While I was at it, I stored the contents of the textbook in the Workshop, too.

I stopped taking notes. There was no need. Instead, I focused on the teacher’s explanation.

The writing on the board would be stored for me, and I could review it whenever I wanted later.

Once I stopped taking notes, the strange looks from those around me eased a little.

They seemed convinced I had stopped because I couldn’t be bothered.

Even the teacher seemed calmer. The look on their face said, There we go. That’s more like it.

What was everyone’s problem?

* * *

Even if I could manage the written exams with enough time and effort, the practical exams were a problem.

For Frondier, who lacked not only Divine Power but even a decent skill or spell, the practical exams presented an insurmountable wall.

Weaving was all I had to rely on, but what could I possibly do with it?

‘Replicas that no one else can see, and that can’t affect reality.’

There was a good chance this skill was the main reason for Frondier’s laziness. He had probably tried every conceivable way to make it useful already.

If he had still failed to find any use for it and given up, things were looking hopeless.

“...?”

As I walked down the hallway, pondering Weaving, I spotted a girl approaching from the other end.

Outside the windows, leaves rustled against one another.

Sunset-colored hair. Wide eyes with irises tinted like a lake.

With every step she took, the atmosphere spilling from her eyes washed over the entire scene.

Without sparing me a glance, she slowly drew closer.

I knew who she was at once.

With looks that beautiful, it would have been hard not to.

Elodie.

Elodie de Inies Rishae.

The child beloved by five gods was right in front of me.

Elodie was the character in Etius who had all the talent piled onto her.

The words “beloved by five gods” alone summed up how ridiculously overpowered she was.

The only disappointment was that she never joined the protagonist’s party.

No matter how often you invited her during a playthrough, she always refused. The reason was never revealed, either.

Still, she would later hold a crucial role in the military, so she was certainly a dependable ally.

Among the vast assortment of personalities in Etius, she was one of the few named characters who put the player at ease.

... But that was when I was the protagonist.

I was Frondier.

Elodie and I probably didn’t know each other, and even if we did, she wouldn’t have anything nice to say to me.

Plenty of students disliked Frondier to begin with. His grades were abysmal, and he never put in any effort.

A lazy, immature brat who did nothing while hiding behind his distinguished family’s name. That was Frondier’s reputation, and it was accurate.

Elodie, on the other hand, was a model of diligence and exemplary conduct for the other students. From her perspective, my very existence must have been revolting.

... And since I wasn’t the protagonist, I would just walk quietly past.

“... Frondier.”

I had meant to walk quietly past, but she called me to a stop.

I looked at Elodie.

She fixed me with eyes brimming with anger.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

I did.

Do you know me?

I couldn’t bring myself to say that, so I watched her in silence. I heard her teeth grind.

“... Do you have any idea how I felt when I—”

As Elodie murmured something, I spotted an object flying toward us from outside the window on her right.

A baseball, coming straight—

My hand moved before I knew it. She moved hers at almost the exact same time.

CRASH!

The incoming baseball shattered the window. As glass fragments came showering in with the ball, I—

Frondier’s Unique Skill

Weaving

Workshop Item No. 3

Grade - Common

Iron Shield

I wove the shield that the original Frondier had stored before I arrived and thrust it forward.

Only afterward did I realize.

‘Oh, you idiot.’

This was an illusion. It couldn’t block a thing—

FWOOSH!

As that thought flashed through my mind, the baseball and glass shards were engulfed in flames all at once.

As though even their momentum had been devoured by the fire, they lost their force and fluttered like petals.

‘Wow...’

That wasn’t my doing.

Elodie’s right hand was outstretched toward the shards, and her eyes and hair had turned red before I knew it. She had set all of it ablaze in an instant.

The glass and baseball, burning in Elodie’s flames, lost their momentum and fell.

Just as a few shards were about to catch on our clothes or graze us—

CLATTER!

“Huh?”

“... Huh?”

The two of us voiced much the same confusion.

The baseball and glass shards had bounced off thin air.

Not a single fragment struck my hand or any part of her body. They all missed.

‘They didn’t just bounce off thin air. My shield...’

The shield had blocked the glass shards. My shield, which should have been nothing but an illusion.

“... Um, thanks, Frondier. I don’t know how you did that...”

Elodie didn’t understand what had happened.

Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t see my shield.

The fact that she thanked me anyway showed how conscientious she was.

“But, well! You saw that, right? Even if you hadn’t blocked it, my flames would have—”

She kept talking after that, but my attention was somewhere else entirely.

“... Um, are you listening? This is a little embarrassing.”

I went over what had just happened once more.

My shield had definitely blocked the window glass and the baseball.

“Hey, could you just say something? Anything?”

In other words, Weaving wasn’t entirely illusory. Under the right conditions, it could affect reality.

I didn’t know what those conditions were yet. But discovering that it could affect reality mattered more than anything.

“Hey, you don’t have to ignore me that much!”

A tiny thrill ran through me.

Clenching my fist, I strode down the hallway, one step at a time.

I felt as though I had found a faint path forward in this shitty game that had seemed utterly hopeless.

Sunlight briefly brushed my face, lending the moment a touch of splendor.

“HEY!!!”

* * *

“Ow.”

The baseball hit me on the head yet again. I picked it up from where it had rolled after bouncing off my head and rubbed the sore spot.

“I thought I had it for sure.”

I was currently testing Weaving in various ways.

The thing that had blocked those fragments had to be the shield I’d woven.

At the time, I had thought:

Could this skill be something incredible that turned real instead of illusory whenever its user was in danger?

To test that, I replicated the shield and tossed the baseball up. As the ball fell toward my head, I held the shield over it.

... But of course, there was no such convenient feature.

The baseball sailed straight through the shield and struck me on the head.

Then again, if the game had handed out conveniences like that, I would have beaten it ages ago.

“How do I make it work in reality?”

There was no question that it had blocked the glass shards.

Everything that happened proved my Weaving had manifested in reality.

But I didn’t know how.

“Ugh, I’m exhausted.”

I slumped back in my chair, half-reclining, feeling drained.

It wasn’t just frustration. My body really was exhausted.

Was this the backlash from using Weaving too much?

“Seriously, why does it wear me out when it doesn’t even manifest in reality?”

As I muttered that complaint, something struck me.

... Actually, yes.

Why was I getting tired?

What was this peculiar drained feeling?

Those questions flashed through my mind one after another, and I sat up.

“... Is it mana?”

Just as Etius had skills and magic, it naturally had mana, too.

Of course, now that I was Frondier, I should have it as well.

But I wasn’t from this world, so I didn’t know what mana felt like.

If mana was the reason I felt so drained, however, that meant Weaving was a skill that used mana.

In other words, it was closer to magic.

‘Think back. What was mana in Etius? What was the concept behind magic?’

Magic in Etius wasn’t about matter.

It was about phenomena.

Whether you shot fire, launched spears of ice, or raised walls of earth, none of it could remain in reality indefinitely.

Once the caster canceled the spell or ran out of mana, it all disappeared.

A naturally occurring forest fire kept burning until it was extinguished or ran out of fuel. But even if a mage’s flames spread into a forest fire, the flames themselves would disappear once the mana ran out.

That was why, disappointing as it had been, I had accepted that Frondier’s Weaving couldn’t affect reality.

Magic might seem all-powerful at first glance, but it had clear limits.

It could burn, freeze, and destroy.

But it couldn’t bring something into existence where there had been nothing.

Not even a replica.

‘I need to change my thinking. Trying to create something in empty space was wrong to begin with. That’s impossible. I can’t create a shield.’

What I needed wasn’t matter.

It was a phenomenon.

Just as a mage created the phenomenon of burning when conjuring fire.

For a sword, the phenomenon of cutting.

For a shield, the phenomenon of blocking.

WHOOSH!

I tossed the baseball into the air.

Timing it to when the ball would fall onto my head—

Frondier’s Unique Skill

Weaving

Workshop Item No. 3

Grade - Common

Iron Shield

I wasn’t creating the shield itself.

I was creating the phenomenon of blocking an attack with a shield.

For just one instant.

CLANG!

The sound was light. The baseball bounced off the shield, changed course, and fell.

“... It worked.”

It manifested in reality only at the moment it blocked something.

But even if it lasted only an instant, real was real.

I trembled with a small surge of emotion.