Part 1: Frondier the Human Sloth (2)

I had gotten used to class.

That didn’t mean I had begun to understand the lessons. I still didn’t know jack shit. I simply stored images of everything we covered in the Workshop, whether it was on the board or in the textbook.

What I had gotten used to was the atmosphere during class. More accurately, everyone had gotten used to it, myself included.

People were gradually getting accustomed to seeing me awake and looking at the board in every class. The fact that I never took any notes seemed to have helped the students make sense of it.

“Now, let me ask you a question.”

The teacher lowered the Wizerview she had been using to display the lesson. The answer was probably on that screen.

“Frondier.”

The teacher looked distinctly displeased as she called on me.

The fact that I was awake and listening to the lesson might please some teachers, but it could have the opposite effect on others.

In truth, Frondier had only been able to sleep through every class because he was a “son of the Roach family.”

Constel, the school I attended, made no distinction between nobles and commoners. Ability was the only dividing line.

But that didn’t mean everyone within its walls thought that way. Constel’s system was meritocratic; the people in it each had their own opinions. Some sucked up to nobles and looked down on commoners, while others blindly sided with commoners and despised the nobility.

That was what made Frondier’s position so funny.

Teachers who fawned over nobles left me alone when I slept, and teachers who openly disliked nobles ignored me whether I slept or not.

In short, neither side interfered with Frondier’s laziness.

‘When you put it that way, that first teacher who woke me up was an unusual one.’

He had woken me simply because I was a student and class was in session. A thoroughly teacher-like response.

The more people like that a school had, the more it deserved to be called a proper educational institution.

But the teacher standing before me now didn’t strike me as that sort. The loathing in her eyes proved it.

“What happened in the year 144 of the Terst Imperial Calendar?”

...?

The answer had been included in the material she had just displayed on the Wizerview. But only a few minutes had passed since we saw it.

The others had diligently written it down, of course.

“You may consult your notes.”

Well, well. This woman.

Had it bothered her that much to see me sitting there without writing anything down?

I retrieved the stored image from the Workshop. These were my “notes.”

While I brought it up and checked its contents, the teacher let out a pointed sigh.

“Can’t answer? Then next time, you should take proper—”

“His Majesty Edejion Terst passed away.”

Edejion. To put it simply, the current Terst emperor’s grandfather.

Honestly, he wasn’t an emperor the empire’s citizens could take pride in. His reign had fallen right in the middle of the period when monsters were steadily whittling away humanity’s territory.

An incompetent emperor who had departed leaving behind nothing but a record of defeats.

But anyone who had ascended the throne at that time would have died bearing the same disgrace. That was how difficult and hopeless those days had been. You had to call it bad luck.

The teacher’s gaze turned vicious.

Why are you looking at me like that? Your student got the answer right.

“... That wasn’t all, was it?”

“Immediately after the emperor’s death, the empire moved its capital to Silester. This was the Terst Empire’s third relocation of its capital, and remains its last to date.”

I was merely reading from the image I had retrieved. It might seem underhanded, but what could I do? She had told me to.

“Even then, the need for combat training institutions like Constel, where we are now, was recognized. A proposal reached the legislative stage, but was rejected. In hindsight, that was the right decision. At the time, firmly securing the boundary between humanity and the monsters had to come first.”

“... And?”

The teacher seemed determined to see how far I could go. I could only marvel at the absurdity of it.

“... The next entry is for the year 145.”

I had read it all.

“...”

“...”

A brief staring contest ensued. Honestly, I had no idea why we were having one.

A vein stood out on the forehead of the old la—teacher glaring at me.

After a moment, she adjusted her glasses with an air of studied composure.

“Very well. Now, on the next page—”

The Wizerview came back on, and class resumed as though nothing had happened.

The only difference was the occasional slight tremble of the teacher’s fingers as the students stifled their snickers.

* * *

The Divine Power Measurement Room.

This facility boasted the largest space in Constel.

Only a handful of students possessed Divine Power, but their powers varied enormously, as did their strength and scale. To ensure more accurate measurements, each student with Divine Power had an individual record sheet. The teachers reviewed those records together to arrive at an appropriate assessment.

“... Incredible.”

A girl stood in the room, surrounded by a chilling scene of destruction: split rocks, scorch marks, frozen ground, sharply etched lightning patterns, and more.

It was hard to believe one person had done it all.

Ales, the teacher observing her assessment, swallowed hard.

‘So this is the girl they call Inies.’

Inies wasn’t her actual given name. She had received it as a middle name because she was beloved by five gods.

Elodie de Inies Rishae.

Elodie, the eldest daughter of the Richae family. A girl who alone possessed five Divine Powers, when most people struggled to obtain even one.

At the tender age of seventeen, her future was as good as decided: a future in which she would be the focus of everyone’s admiration and respect, jealousy and envy.

“How did I do? My results, I mean.”

“Hmm, almost exactly the same as before. You needn’t worry about your numbers dropping.”

Ales answered with a carefully composed expression.

“Aw. I was hoping they’d go up.”

Elodie wore a playful smile. Ales smiled back, but broke into a cold sweat.

What was anyone supposed to do if they went up even further?

Yet despite her joking tone, a shadow lingered over Elodie’s face.

Her encounter with Frondier in the hallway was still on her mind.

[“... Do you have any idea how I...”]

Had waited for him.

She hadn’t finished saying it. The baseball that suddenly flew toward them had brought the conversation to an inconclusive end.

Now, though, she considered that a blessing.

Frondier and Elodie had known each other since childhood, though no one at Constel knew it.

Frondier’s family, the Roach family, and Elodie’s, the Richae family, had been both allies and rivals for a very long time. Ampere, head of the Roach family, was famous for his achievements as the Iron Wall, but the Richae family had contributed no small part to those accomplishments.

It was inevitable that the two family heads’ children, a boy and a girl of the same age, would come to know each other.

... It wasn’t that Elodie had expected anything particular of Frondier.

The son of the great Ampere. The younger brother of the great Atzier.

Everyone had expected Frondier to possess talent on par with theirs, but Elodie hadn’t cared about any of that. As an old friend, she had simply wanted him to pull his own weight.

But Frondier hadn’t.

He had neither Divine Power nor talent, and even his character was lacking. He made no effort to improve his poor skills, showed no sense of responsibility toward his duties, and couldn’t even manage his own daily life.

The fondness she had felt for him since childhood had faded over the years.

And finally, Frondier had broken even that last promise he had made to her.

[“Frondier, meet me at Constel’s east gate after school. There’s something I need to give you.”]

Surely that hadn’t been a difficult promise to keep. He had been the one to say yes.

... Yet Frondier had never shown up. Then he had tried to walk past her in the hallway as though she were a complete stranger.

‘... The hallway.’

Elodie narrowed her eyes, then asked Ales a question.

“... Sir, how would you stop arrows flying toward you?”

She recalled the small commotion in the hallway when she had been with Frondier. A baseball had flown through the window, shattering it, and she had engulfed everything in flames in an instant.

But as the pieces fell, they had bounced off something in midair.

Frondier had clearly done it, but she had no idea how.

Explaining the whole incident would be awkward, so she substituted arrows for the shards of glass.

“With magic, there are countless ways. Burn them, freeze them, blow them away with wind. You only need to rob them of their force. Unless they’re magic-breaking arrows, of course.”

“... What would you think if someone stopped arrows with something like an invisible wall?”

“You mean they pushed them back with wind?”

“No, I mean they literally deflected them with an invisible wall.”

“Have you seen someone do that?”

“N-no! It’s just hypothetical. I’m only asking what it would mean if someone did.”

Coming from another student, Elodie’s question might have sounded childish and foolish.

But Ales considered it seriously, precisely because Elodie was the one asking. She would already have considered whatever occurred to him. If she was asking anyway, there had to be something about the question that warranted deeper thought.

... Yet even after reconsidering it, his conclusion remained the same.

“It would be a strange thing to do.”

“... Wouldn’t it?”

“The most likely explanation is invisibility magic. Whether it’s a wall, a shield, or anything else, you cast invisibility on an object a person can hold, then use it to stop the arrows. To an observer, that could look like an ‘invisible wall.’ Quite literally. But invisibility magic is extremely tricky. You aren’t truly making something transparent; you have to manipulate the diffuse reflection of light. Even a slight miscalculation will ruin the effect. And even if you succeed, one question remains.”

“... Why go to all that trouble?”

“Exactly. If you only want to block something, there’s no need for invisibility. An ordinary shield will do. You don’t even need magic. If you insist on using magic, there are easier methods, and if you’re going to block with a shield, there’s no need to make it invisible. It doesn’t add up.”

Elodie nodded. She had reached the same conclusion.

... Besides, she had left out the details when speaking to Ales.

Arrows belonged on a battlefield, whereas in her case, it hadn’t even been arrows, but glass shards. Just an everyday accident.

Who would walk down an ordinary hallway carrying an invisible shield, preparing for an attack that might or might not ever come?

After a moment’s thought, Ales spoke cautiously.

“There is one other possibility, but it’s extremely unlikely.”

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s a ridiculous idea.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Ales gave a wry smile. His expression alone made it clear how absurd he considered what he was about to say.

“Using Aura.”

“... Aura? The kind warriors imbue their weapons with?”

“Yes. Mana and Aura are fundamentally the same substance, called ‘Energy.’ A mage manipulates Mana through formulas to produce magic, while a warrior imbues something with Aura itself through tens of thousands of repetitions of training and conditioning.”

“But what does that have to do with an invisible wall?”

“It’s unfamiliar territory for mages, but warriors who have reached a certain level can produce Aura even without a weapon.”

Elodie’s mouth fell open. Only then did she begin to grasp what Ales was getting at.

She could see exactly why he had called it ridiculous.

“So... you’re saying a warrior at that level created a shield-sized mass of Aura with their bare hands?”

“This was hypothetical, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, r-right! Hypothetically! I was just asking whether something like that was possible.”

Even as she answered, Elodie considered it.

Of course there was no possibility whatsoever that Frondier had produced Aura. Only a tiny handful of people could produce it barehanded, without a weapon, to begin with.

And he had supposedly created enough to deflect all those countless shards of glass?

‘... Impossible.’

Then Frondier had either done something as foolish as casting invisibility on a shield, or...

... Or what?

Ales smiled at the troubled look on Elodie’s face. She had clearly seen something.

But he was certain she had misinterpreted it.

“But that’s only a theory. No one could actually do it.”

“... Ah. I thought as much.”

“If even one person could, humanity’s territory would be larger than it is today.”

“It would make that much of a difference?”

“If someone could create shield-sized Aura with their bare hands, without a weapon, their body itself would be on par with a legendary weapon. One that could fire indiscriminately, at that. Imagine dozens of invisible weapons flying toward you, each leaving a hole its own size wherever it hit.”

At his words, Elodie’s face went cold.

“That certainly is frightening.”