The academy, which had returned after a long time, was fully committed to service.
First, there were suddenly many high-quality lectures that first years could never be allowed to take in the second semester.
Stand Mill’s Theory of Functional Monopoly.
Pythagoras’s Magic Writing through Knowledge Assessment.
Demonika’s Picnic Healing.
If memory serves, these hidden lectures can only be unlocked when the overall grades of the first-year students reach a certain level.
This was something you wouldn’t find in episodes where they were obsessively watching each other or getting lazy in peace, or when the chapter boss was rampaging and the study atmosphere was completely wrecked!
It was worth managing Hestia’s mental health and taking care of my friends, as it all came back now.
“Grand Duke, tell me honestly. Are you choosing only the difficult lectures just to mess with us?”
“…That’s a misunderstanding. I just wanted to take at least one lecture and relax while getting credits…”
“Seriously, how could you even choose this? This is worse than Sleeping Anywhere…”
Even Andersen, who was playing the academy life on his own hard mode, must have been somehow part of this mess, right?
Seoguyeon’s exemplary academy life really does make my heart swell every time I see it.
“Let’s take the same lecture on Friday!”
“Are you serious? You want to take a class I’m in?”
“Why not, right?”
Andersen, who was quite flustered by my decision to take the same lecture as him, was already receiving sharp glares from Seoguyeon’s nobles and followers.
He drove everyone away and left me with a private warning.
“Cancel your course registration if you can. If you can’t cancel, just give up altogether.”
“I actually enjoy taking difficult classes too!”
“Everyone says that before they go through it. Getting ridiculed within Seoguyeon is fine. Their poor choices can be my responsibility as a leader. But if you get dragged into that, that’s a different situation. I can’t show my face in Arcadia with that.”
“But I’m still going to take it!”
“Ugh… I don’t know who you take after with that stubbornness. If you insist on taking it, I’ll try to look after you.”
“Should I bring April along too?”
“…No need.”
The Grand Duke’s eyes were shaking intensely!
*
With the new semester, the second good point emerged.
Restricted areas like crime scenes were lined up all over the academy.
“What’s this place?”
“Be careful. It feels similar to the mana congestion zones from the ruins.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“If you accidentally enter, your body might get squished, or fire could ignite out of nowhere. Don’t go in unless you have a sure means of protecting yourself.”
“Yikes!”
This time, Isabel dumped cold water on Titosso’s curiosity, who had signed up for Professor Bronze’s class.
“Heh. Isabel, you’re surprisingly knowledgeable.”
“I’ve told you many times, I’m not a chef. I’m the next designated leader of the Esonia Exploration Team. I have this level of experience.”
“Ugh. I wish I could be an explorer too…”
Titosso, whining while biting my finger, had her cheeks poked playfully.
“Tito-tito. Look at this?”
“What’s that?”
“Yap!”
Ignoring the no-entry tape, she jumped right in!
[You’ve entered the no-entry zone with an excellent jump.]
[Jump Experience +1]
“Eek! You can’t go in there! You might explode and die!!”
“Oknodie! What are you doing? Get out of there quickly!”
“But Isabel said that if you have a way to protect yourself, you can go in. I already have a means to keep myself safe!”
[Continuously cutting off the mana pattern assembled nearby, you’ve prevented the occurrence of an anomaly.]
[Mana Control Technique Experience +1]
Even without a large quantity of mana or a powerful Mana Flow Technique, if you possess the techniques of a veteran player, you can easily prevent the anomalies occurring in a mana congestion zone.
However, if the density becomes too high or the re-emergence speed is too rapid, it becomes impossible, but this is just a hallway where first years pass by.
The mana congestion zone measured here wasn’t that fierce.
To humans, a mana congestion zone that doesn’t show signs of anomalies feels like a powder keg, but it offers comfort to other creatures like a home.
The main character is the spirit fish that swims through mana like fish through water.
“Fishy, come here~”
By continuously suppressing the manifestations of anomalies and stabilizing the mana, a spirit fish popped out of the dimensional rift.
Blub blub
Both Titosso and Isabel gaped in awe at the sight of the spirit fish floating in the air with its mouth opening and closing.
“Pretty…”
“Right? Isn’t it pretty?”
“Are you going to catch it and keep it?”
Titosso, with a pitiful expression like a child begging their parent for a pet, was adorable yet heartbreaking.
But sorry, I’m not your mom!
“This is what I’m going to do!”
Wrapping the spirit creature in Dark Mana, I opened my mouth wide.
Spirits work under different mechanisms than real living beings, so even if you see flesh, bones, and eyes, they don’t exist physically.
They are made up of pure energy.
So, I can do things like this.
Gulp!
Swallowed it whole!
“Ahhhh! The fish! The fishiiiii…!”
━━━
[You’ve collected a rare dish [Spirit Fish] in the Cookbook.]
━━━
[The Cooking Handbook [Rare][Seafood][Raw][Spirit] stack has increased.]
━━━
[Collection Effect]
20 kinds of raw dishes collected – Increases natural healing power by 2%.
Collection of rare dish [Spirit Fish Raw] – Acquired [Smooth Skin], Increases Mana Purity by 1%.
━━━
Titosso had a sad face as if she heard that a puppy she saw on the road was sold to a dog meat restaurant.
“Ughh.”
Her eyes were watering like she had found a collar abandoned in the back yard of a dog meat restaurant.
“Calm down, Titosso!”
“Why did you eat the fish…”
“Eating this clears up your mana!”
“My dad said that too… that eating Poppy would make you healthy… and then Poppy died…”
Oops.
Looks like Titosso was already familiar with that pattern her dad used.
“It’s not a lie. The spirit fish is actually used as a key ingredient in a healing potion.”
“Izabel! Why would you say that now!”
“Ah, sorry.”
“Sniff sniff!”
“Look, now Titosso’s crying even more!”
Despite her first-stage cry with a sniff sniff, and now up to the second-stage sniff sniff, she showed no signs of calming down.
Could she be trying to unleash a third-stage Waaah Waaah cry!?
“I’m sorry, Titosso. However, the spirit fish is a prey creature that occupies the lower level of the food pyramid in the ecosystem. No matter how cute, someone will eventually eat it.”
No way.
Rationality didn’t work to quell Titosso’s tear-stained sniff sniff and her soul-stirring sniff sniff, nor could it prevent her impending Waaah Waaah outburst.
Tch, I didn’t want it to come to this.
But what could I do?
I took a deep breath and held Titosso’s hand.
“Stop crying! If you don’t cry, I’ll give you the next spirit fish I catch. If you cry, I won’t give it to you!”
After a moment of crying heartbreakingly, Titosso stopped as if by magic.
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Really, really?”
“Yup yup.”
“Hehe. I love Oknodie!”
Isabel just had to comment.
“I can’t even tell who’s the child here.”
Titosso ultimately stole the healing ingredients from the veteran player.
But her adorable nature was truly a cheat key.
*
Jezel decided to ask Oknodie about what happened at the Foundation whenever the opportunity arose.
Of course, it wasn’t a conversation you could bring up openly in front of everyone.
It was a sensitive matter that could only be brought up after a class when they moved to a safe place away from other people’s eyes and ears.
So Jezell waited.
Oknodie was a person too; during waiting, she would eventually find time after the lectures.
From 9 AM to 10:50 AM.
1st period, homeroom.
Oknodie was busy signing up for classes.
From 11 AM to 12:50 PM.
2nd period, Everything about Disassembly.
Professor Bronze introduced this semester as a continuation of Insight; she would teach various traps and lock disassembly methods and placed the stage-by-stage locks side by side.
With the first to unlock the highest-level lock, Oknodie dashed out in excitement, saying she was going to eat fish.
From 1 PM to 2 PM.
The official lunch hour of the academy.
A professor disrupting this time would be classified as the worst of the worst in the academy, filled with all kinds of malicious professors. Luckily, Professor Bronze wasn’t that bad.
Released late, Jezell searched for Oknodie, but had no time to figure out where she was or what she was doing.
From 2 PM to 5:50 PM.
3rd period, Combat Function Tech Tree.
The Dark Trading Company’s information network had made a breakthrough.
Oknodie was found in the lair of the Knight Department.
“The function activates simultaneously within the same field. The number of simultaneous functions determines the power and efficiency of the same activity, the same work significantly changes. For commoners, it’s a miracle to even have a feeble boost from a [Labor] function, but for mercenaries, the strong functions of [Swordsmanship] and [Grit] can accompany them. And here, Oknodie displayed as many as five related functions simultaneously. Let’s give her a round of applause.”
Clap clap clap.
Seeing Oknodie smiling amidst the faces of the hesitant Knight Department aspirants made the anxious hours spent worrying were relieved in a snap.
Jezell gaped in shock as she saw Oknodie bow and dash out of the lecture hall.
“Wait just a moment!”
“Oh? Jezell, what are you doing here?”
In that brief moment, Oknodie attempted to scale the wall and leap to the tree like a cat, stopping to place her hands and feet against the wall.
“After dinner, I’d like to discuss things that happened at the Foundation, just the two of us. Do you have time?”
Looking at her magic watch, Oknodie replied after checking her schedule.
“No!”
“Oh dear. Do you have a class?”
“Yep. From 7 PM, I have Professor Sadako’s class, and from 9 PM, I have Professor Pinkberry’s.”
“How about Tuesday?”
“My schedule is packed with classes and training!”
“…Wednesday?”
“My schedule is packed with classes and training!”
“So when do you have time? Never mind, let’s just talk over the weekend. Saturday after breakfast should be fine, right?”
“I’m attending a class with Older Sister Arcadia!”
“…Could you show me your schedule, please?”
Seeing a packed schedule with 38 credits and 13 classes, Jezell felt a surge of fear.
How can a person endure such a schedule?
“Why do you have so many classes?”
“Thanks to Papa, I get to take a lot of them!”
“Is this… the Foundation’s doing?”
Oknodie’s head tilted as she chuckled and replied under the anger that twisted Jezell’s voice.
“Yep! If it weren’t for Papa, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take this many classes.”
That Foundation.
These guys intended to strip Oknodie of all her break times, sleeping times, and time to play with friends at the academy, just to exhaust her to the point of collapse studying!
They were surely trying to cause her to voluntarily drop out of the academy out of dismay at its very existence, not even considering the severing of bonds with friends.
“If a person takes this many classes… they’ll be buried under assignments!”
“It’s okay. I’m a special child, so I won’t die!”
So you’re tricking Oknodie, huh?
The Chief Scholarship Student of the Foundation.
Was that “specialness” a weapon they planned to use to erase Oknodie from any location other than the Foundation?
Delaying her return by a week was definitely to make sure she couldn’t catch up to the classes in a way that wouldn’t incur the Foundation’s sanctions against the academy.
I didn’t like this.
The Foundation’s cowardly actions always infuriated me, but this had truly crossed the line.
Jezell’s narrowed eyes opened slightly but sharply.
“If you thought I’d just take this lying down, you’re mistaken. I’ll turn the Foundation’s wicked plot against them.”
