Renya stood off to the side and observed from a distance to not interfere with the class. The woman raised her voice to speak to the class. As soon as she did, he found out why she seemed troubled.
“Okay, everyone, we’re starting class! Please make four rows!”
Her voice was fairly loud, but it elicited no reaction from the students. They idly hung about the field, walking and talking and chatting. Sometimes, they would take a few swings at each other with their weapons, but no one bothered to glance in the woman’s direction.
“Everyone! We’re in the middle of class right now! Please follow my instructions!” she said in an even louder voice, undeterred by the muted reaction. She seemed determined to create an atmosphere in which some teaching could actually happen.
“Teacher?” scoffed one of the male students. He walked in front of the woman. “Give me a break. Losers who can’t even beat their students don’t get to be teachers.”
Renya looked the male student over. Even in his opinion, the kid was well-built.
“The female teacher there is Lealis. The male student standing in front of her is Orran Schmeisser. He’s the eldest son of General Schmeisser of the Triden Army and also one of the students who beat her in battle.”
“One of…? You mean there are more?”
“Yeah. Over there…”
Azu pointed to a corner of the sparring grounds where a group of female students were gathered. At the center of them stood a girl who wore her blond hair in ringlets.
“See little miss ringlets there? That’s Natalia Fatale, eldest daughter of Marquess Fatale. She and Orran are the two who beat Lealis in battle.”
“Hm. By the way, how old are they?”
“They’re both fifteen.”
“Right when they’re all full of themselves, huh.”
Being nobles, they were insufferable enough, but these kids were exactly at the age when they feel an incessant urge to oppose adults. Their rebellious nature, combined with the fact that they actually managed to wrestle a win from their teacher, had probably set them on an irreversible course toward delinquency.
While Renya and Azu talked, Lealis was trying to restore some semblance of order to the class, but had her efforts thwarted by Orran and his flunkies who stood in her path. As they pressed closer and closer to her, she grew quieter and quieter, eventually losing her words entirely.
“Hey, about that teacher. Lealis, right? What rank is she at the guild?”
“I believe… she reached D before she became a teacher.”
“Cool. Right, then. Time for me to do my job. Frau, you stay here with Azu and wait for me, okay?”
“Mm-hm. But this is as far as Frau can be. Any further is a big no-no, so please be quick, OK?”
Frau had to affix her bond to her master to leave the house, so she couldn’t move too far away from Renya. He gave the fairy a nod and smile before turning to the mob of students around Lealis. With his right hand, he drew the practice sword he borrowed from Azu and gave it a good swing.
“Hey, big-and-uglies over there,” he called out. His voice wasn’t too loud, but Orran and his flunkies seemed to hear him. By the time they looked in his direction, he was already halfway through his throw. With one powerful swing of his arm, he whipped his sword at the group of students.
“Better watch out!”
“Wha—?”
They had enough time to see what he was doing and move out of the way. Most of them did. Unfortunately, one poor fool kept teasing Lealis, unaware of what just happened. The practice sword slammed into the side of his head, and he fell to the ground without so much as a peep.
Everyone stood in silent shock at Renya’s sudden entry. Unfazed by their wordless gawking, he casually walked over to Lealis, pointedly ignored the fallen student as he picked up his sword, and said hi to the still-stunned teacher.
“I’m Renya Kunugi. Adventurer. Guild rank F. I heard from Azu that a D-ranked senior of mine was in need of help, so here I am.”
“Huh? You heard from Azzy?”
Azzy?
Renya quickly spun around and stared at Azu, who matched his speed with a similar spin to avoid meeting his gaze. Even from where he stood, though, he could tell that Azu’s ears had turned red. His lips curled upwards. For some reason, Frau also gave Azu a thumbs up. Both master and fairy grinned gleefully at the mage.
“Um, how do you know Azzy? Are you an acquaintance of his?”
“We worked together before. I was with him when he did the job that ultimately sent him here,” he answered without looking away from Azu, who seemed determined to scrutinize a particularly distant corner of the grounds for the rest of the day. After a period of stalemate, he decided to release Azu from the fetters of his gaze, figuring he’d interrogate the mage about it later.
“Hey, you.”
With the air of someone who was waiting to hear that, Renya turned toward the speaker and grinned. It was a very different grin than the one he showed Azu. Gone was the wink of friendly teasing, replaced by the leer of a hunter whose trap had been sprung.
“What do you want, Jumbo?”
Still surrounded by his flunkies, Orran glared at Renya. Anger was written plain on the big student’s face. Renya rested his practice sword on his shoulder and met Orran’s stare head-on. His smile widened. Had Orran’s sense of danger been as sensitive as Lealis’s, he would have doubtlessly fled the grounds immediately, because that was exactly what Lealis did; sensing something disquieting about Renya, she saw Azu beckoning her and exited the grounds with him. Then, together with Frau, the three of them quickly evacuated to the audience seats outside the force field. The only people who remained in the sparring grounds were Renya, Orran’s group, and the rest of the students who watched from a distance.
“A boorish fellow, aren’t you? I see that you haven’t the slightest idea how to behave before a noble.”
Orran’s flunkies laughed along with him in a truly flunky-like manner. Their laughs, however, were soon drowned out by an even louder laugh. The laugher, of course, was Renya.
“A noble? Oh, man, you’re too good! Look, buddy, there are nobles, and then there are punk kids who got lucky in a fight and won. And you fall squarely in the second category.”
“You…”
Orran’s eyes began to gleam dangerously. His flunkies’ glares were similarly threatening. Even Natalia and the girls around her, apparently having heard Renya’s remark, shot menacing gazes at him.
“What, you got a problem? Prove me wrong then. You kids beat a D-ranked adventurer, right? I’m nothing compared to her.”
Somewhere in the distance, Renya thought he heard the sound of a sudden and unexpected ejection of liquid from Azu’s mouth. Still shouldering his sword, he didn’t let it bother him as he raised his left hand and gave the students a provocative curl of the fingers. He was telling the truth, after all.
Rank-wise, anyway.
The body of the student who took a flying sword to the head and fell unconscious was gone. The protective function of the force field had apparently ejected him outside. The implication was clear: with a single hit, Renya had done fatal damage to the student. In a way, this was not particularly surprising. Even though he had thrown a blunted sword, it was still a sword; a speeding hunk of metal making contact with an unguarded head led to fairly predictable results.
In this case, the person who did the throwing — Renya — was not particularly bothered. His reaction was more or less, “Huh, I guess I just insta-killed that dude.”
The students, however, were very bothered. In effect, some guy had just shown up and murdered one of their classmates — in a most casual manner, to boot.
“‘Prove me wrong,’ huh. Big words coming from a lowly adventurer, and a third-rate at that. Those words are going to get you in trouble, adventurer scum.” Orran drew his sword. For fifteen years of age, he was fairly tall, and his solid build left no doubts as to how he divided his time between mind and muscle. Standing face to face, he seemed every bit Renya’s equal, despite the fact that Renya was supposed to have been set to eighteen years old. “If you take back what you said and apologize, adventurer, I might consider letting you off the hook.”
Renya kept observing the young noble, paying absolutely no attention to what he was saying; he doubted there was anything worth hearing anyway. Noticing that Orran’s arms were quite thick, he snuck a glance at his own. He smiled bitterly; good thing this wasn’t a bodybuilding contest.
He also took a peek at Lealis. While she wasn’t exactly a delicate flower, her build was slender and lithe. As a fighter, she likely emphasized speed over power. That one observation was all Renya needed to figure out why she lost to Orran.