The moment the door shut behind her—
“You’re the reason she’s glaring at me, you know.”
Blade’s tone couldn’t have been ruder as he addressed the king.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Don’t give me that,” he replied to the man’s feigned ignorance.
Hearing Blade speak to him so casually didn’t faze the monarch at all. As their interactions indicated, they were old friends. The king shooing everyone else out of a room so he could speak with Blade, and all those other people glaring at Blade as they filed out, had happened dozens of times in the past. Dozens.
They had known each other since Blade was an active Hero. The king had backed him and provided support when he was still only a young boy.
“Why school anyway?” asked Blade.
“Don’t like it?”
“It’s…not that, just…”
Blade paused. It frustrated him that, once again, he’d been made to go along with the king’s schemes… But oh well. He had made four friends. And if you counted her, the total was now five.
A bit of childlike glee crossed Blade’s face for a moment. The king saw this and said, “You know what I want, Blade?”
He sank deeper into his chancellor’s chair. It was a luxurious piece of furniture, but it still creaked under the weight of his finely chiseled body.
“…I want you to get your Hero powers back.”
“But I want to be a normal person! I want to be average!”
Blade raised his voice despite himself. This guy, the king…he just didn’t get it. Blade had defeated the Overlord. He’d carried out his duties as a Hero…and then he’d lost his powers. He saw no reason why he should delay the dream he had held for over ten years any longer.
“I think this school will serve as a good means of rehabilitation. The students are all top-tier, you know. They could be just the stimulation you need.”
“Listen here, old man…”
“And I think I’ve shaken up the curriculum quite a bit. I’ve examined the previous chancellor’s approach to education extensively, and if you ask me, he’s been a bit too lax. The way things stand, we’ll only produce run-of-the-mill champions, at best. To raise a true Hero—”
“We don’t need Heroes anymore, do we? There’s no Overlord left.”
Besides, thought Blade, Heroes weren’t the sort of thing you could create with the right education. People didn’t become Heroes; they were born Heroes.
“Ha-ha! You did defeat him, yes.” The king roared with laughter.
…No I didn’t. We both lost.
Blade scowled and turned his back on the king. This old man… Blade couldn’t bring himself to hate the guy, but he sure knew how to laugh off anything inconvenient. It was like his special ability—a talent people called charisma. And that, of course, was why he’d been able to unite every country on the continent.
“When you and the Overlord struck each other down, it simultaneously extinguished both the power of the Hero and that of the Overlord. That is how it was explained to me, at least.”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s true.” Blade puffed out his chest. That was why he was now a normal person. He could only do normal stuff—the kinds of things run-of-the-mill champions could.
“Well, I, for one, don’t believe that,” said the king.
“Look…”
“Because you are a Hero!” The king’s eyes went wide, and veins appeared on his forehead as he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“This is pointless,” Blade said, giving up. The king had always been like this.
“But don’t mind me,” the man continued. His excitement had vanished, and he’d reassumed his previous, calm demeanor. “Have fun while you’re here, won’t you? Think of it as a vacation.”
When he spoke like this, the king truly felt like a man of character. But Blade knew the truth. Deep down, he was totally different.
Blade chuckled helplessly to himself. At this point, there was nothing he could do but go along with the man’s antics.
✦ ✦ ✦
Blade had been assigned to the junior class, which used one of the school’s lecture halls. In fact, he was there right now, one of many students sitting and listening to the teacher’s lecture. The hall was shaped like a large bowl, with the professor at the deepest part of it, droning on in front of a blackboard.
This hall had a sign reading RANK C at the entrance, and it was indeed a Rank C lecture taking place inside. Blade had heard that around a hundred students in total attended this school. Ranks B and C, to which most of the students belonged, were called the “junior class.” Rank A was the “senior class,” home to the school’s elites; only a dozen or so students were in it.
Blade listened to the lecture, already feeling bored.
“And so, as you can see, a flame-driven attack would do little against a Salamander-type monster…”
He yawned. This whole lecture, as he saw it, was just common sense. From what he’d heard, “schools” were supposed to teach you things you didn’t know… And yet he hadn’t learned anything new from this lesson.
Seated a few rows down was the group of four he had made friends with earlier—Claire, Yessica, Clayde, and Kassim. As his gaze casually drifted their way, Yessica turned around and gave him a friendly wave hello. Blade waved back. Claire, seated next to Yessica, mumbled a warning to her, something like “Don’t do that.” Blade chuckled.
The teacher continued enthusiastically.
“…Now, an effective method for handling this was discovered by the Earl of Jäger in 1715 AH…”
Blade let out a big yawn, and a brilliant idea occurred to him. He used a marker to draw eyes on his eyelids, disguising himself as he fell asleep in his seat. Clayde, a handsome but straitlaced kind of guy, found this hilarious. It took everything he had to keep from laughing out loud. But Blade was too busy sleeping to notice.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Oh?”
As he graded quizzes after class, the professor’s eyes stopped on a certain answer sheet. The name “Blade” was written on it, and when he reviewed it…
“Hmm. Perfect.”
This student, it seemed, had no reason to stay in his class. The professor took out another sheet of paper—a recommendation for promotion to the next rank—and signed his name.