The long-awaited academy life had began.
At a hotel located in the center of Hetairo Island, I woke up early in the morning to get the driver and my roommate up, preparing for school.
“You’re so weird. You’re bad at studying but love doing it. You hate sitting for long periods, but you attend classes diligently.”
“I’m fundamentally diligent.”
I let Leon’s remark go in one ear and out the other.
I also thought it was contradictory, but I had my reasons.
After rolling in the battlefield for over ten years in my previous life, I realized how precious everyday life could be.
Regardless of how well I study, the mere fact that I can sit peacefully at a desk made me happy.
Besides, I had never experienced campus life in my previous life either.
Right after graduating from high school, I went to the military, accidentally signed up as a non-commissioned officer, and then the Third World War broke out…
Somehow, I got transferred from the Korean military to the U.S. Army Rangers…
Sigh.
That’s enough negative thoughts for now.
Anyway, my academy life was just beginning.
I knew in my head that going to university didn’t mean it would automatically be full of youthful moments, but still, wasn’t there always a part of everyone that hoped it might be?
Whether the source of these fantasies came from comics or dramas might vary slightly, but most would imagine something close to a rosy future.
I wasn’t much different.
I knew rationally that the chances of that happening were slim, but there’s no harm in imagining, right?
Clutching an age-inappropriate sense of inflated expectation, I practically jumped into the car.
The driver, who was suddenly tasked with dropping me off at the Hero Department and taking the prince to the Political Science Department, rubbed his sleepy eyes and took the wheel.
“Allen, isn’t it a bit much to make me work this early in the morning?”
“Why? Tired?”
“Of course I am.”
“Well, then I’ll drive. Want to sleep in the car?”
He briefly imagined me driving with his still half-asleep brain and then quickly snapped out of it.
“I’ll drive.”
“That’s more like it.”
Sure, I could get another car and drive by myself, but both my uncle, the Emperor, and my father firmly opposed the idea.
They said someone like me should not be let loose on the road.
They act like I’m some kind of human wrecking ball.
Anyway, Carl had agreed to make the early morning sacrifice every day for the sake of road peace.
“I guess I should find a place near the Hero Department.”
“Why? Are you planning to move out?”
“I can’t keep relying on your guys dorm forever. Plus, the Hero Department and the Political Science Department are on almost opposite sides of the island.”
“I’ll look into it for you.”
For the sake of his own sleep, Carl became even more enthusiastic about finding me a room.
Eating a sandwich in the car, I arrived at the Hero Department and waved to the two as they headed back toward the opposite side of the island.
For the next few days, this routine would probably continue.
With that thought in mind, I headed toward my classroom.
My classroom was 1-F.
By the way, the division of classrooms wasn’t based on grades, but rather on specialties.
Since I was a brawler, I was in Class F.
If I remember correctly, archers were in Class A, heavy weapon users in Class B, sword users in Class S, polearm users in Class P, and firearms users in Class G.
You could take whatever classes you wanted based on the weapon you wanted to use.
If you wanted to use all weapons or hadn’t figured out your specialty yet, you could take Class O.
I was tempted by Class O at first but decided to stick to Class F to focus on the basics.
As I walked down the hallway, confirming the location of Class F on the crystal, I noticed there wasn’t a single classmate around.
Perhaps I had arrived too early.
With no one to ask, I wandered back and forth through the unfamiliar hallways, searching for my classroom.
“Hey! Allen, senior!”
“?”
“Senior! Why are you pretending not to hear me?”
A woman called my name from behind.
Oh, senior.
What a nice ring to it.
It suited campus life perfectly.
If only I weren’t someone who had just enrolled yesterday.
I turned around to identify the mysterious person calling me ‘senior.’
There stood a girl with unforgettable purple twin tails.
“Aylin Violin Quantum.”
“It’s Aily Violata Quinterin! Why do you always get my name wrong? At least get Aily right!”
“Your name’s too hard.”
It’s not like I deliberately avoid remembering her name, but even when I try, I can’t seem to get it right.
Despite remembering names from places like Germany, Greece, Japan, and even Iran from my past life, I can never get used to names from Spain or Portugal.
Anyway, Aily was someone I knew as well.
She, like Carl, was a magician from the Mage Tower.
Her school was the Golden School, which, as the name suggests, mainly dealt with alchemy.
And it was also where my mother had once been the head mage.
Where do you think my crafting ability came from?
Since my father’s magical power and my mother’s intellect went to my brother, it was only natural that my father’s body and mother’s magical power came to me.
If the paladin training grounds were my playground, the Golden Mage Tower was my academy.
Magic in the Golden Mage Tower is broadly divided into four stages:
Alchemy, which transforms iron into gold or other substances,
Crafting, which shapes metals and other materials into desired forms,
Refinement, which mixes materials to create new forms of medicine or living beings,
Enchanting, which imbues already created items with specific properties.
Among these, even though I wasn’t smart enough to understand most complex magic, my crafting skills were recognized by the head mage.
When the head mage saw my modest crafting skills, he gave me a room right below his research lab and instructed me to come for tutoring every day.
I met Aily when I was going for tutoring at the Mage Tower.
At that time, she was an apprentice magician who had just joined the Golden Mage Tower. By chance, when she saw me in the hallway, she immediately called me ‘senior.’
At first, I avoided her because it was burdensome, but our cruel head mage bound her to me as a mentor-mentee pair, and from then on, we became friends, calling each other senior and junior.
Only after we became close did I learn that giving a room right below the head mage’s lab was a privilege given only to his direct disciples, especially those he held dear.
So, within the Golden Mage Tower, I had somehow become a legendary figure.
The son of the third head mage of the Golden Mage Tower and a prodigy who earned the head mage’s favor before even turning fifteen.
Aily’s pursuit of me was to learn from a legendary senior like myself.
But I felt sorry for her, as I wasn’t a particularly good role model, especially in crafting…
Still, it was a good memory that I taught her a lot and learned from her in return, making up for it.
“By the way, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at the Mage Tower?”
“Me? I’ve already become an Elder.”
“?”
What kind of crazy talk is this?
Elder was the final stage in the evolution tree of Mage Tower magicians.
If the head mage’s direct disciple was like a graduate student, then the Elder was like a professor.
I hadn’t seen her since the filming of the John series began, which was about three years ago.
At that time, she was just an apprentice, not even a direct disciple.
But now, after only three years, she had become an Elder?
Is that possible?
“Did you, by any chance, purge the higher-ups or something?”
If she had cleared out the upper management, it would make sense.
“What a ‘coup’?”
“There’s such a thing. It’s bad.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I earned it legitimately with my skills. It’s all thanks to you, senior.”
“??”
The more I talked with her, the less I understood what she was saying.
Is this what it feels like for protagonists in delusional stories?
What is this, how did you do it, I’m scared.
Not wanting to know the aftermath of delusions stacked upon delusions, I decided not to ask her about the internal situation of the Mage Tower.
Regardless, she remained as always, in her own world.
“Thanks to you, I was recognized as the top Elder in crafting! It’s all thanks to you, senior.”
Right. I’ve still been cleaning up the room that the senior used in the Mage Tower. Do you think you might come by sometime to check it out?
“Oh, sure.” Uh…
“Are you not coming?”
“Didn’t they take it out?”
“The head mage and the Elders said never to remove it.”
“??”
What kind of existence had Allen Price become at the Golden Tower?
I couldn’t help but seriously consider my image in her eyes.
Aily walked alongside Allen down the corridor. It was because the Magic Classroom (M Class) she was heading to was right next to F Class. She looked up at the giant who was 190 cm tall, whom she was guiding.
He was deep in thought, unaware that she was looking at him. To her, his demeanor was quite endearing.
It was likely that he was indulging in another grand delusion. He probably thought he was a lucky fool, while attributing Aily’s position as an elder solely to her skills.
Coincidentally, it was actually Allen’s misconception.
The people of the Tower were not fools.
They were not the sort to mistake a fool for a genius, nor was it a place so corrupt that they would elevate someone simply because they were the child of a former Tower Master.
In the Tower, their status was determined purely by ability and talent.
Conversely, a high status indicated high ability and talent.
The Tower Master’s eyes were not blind.
The fact that Allen had been given a room meant for a direct subordinate and was assigned as Aily’s mentor was due to recognizing his talent.
Even during his time in the Tower, Allen often spoke of himself as a fool who knew nothing about theory.
The Tower Master and the elders agreed with that statement.
He was a clueless person who couldn’t even memorize basic alchemical formulas like the Hohenheim formula.
But they could never agree that he lacked talent.
He was a genius who understood magic intuitively.
A prime example of this was an incident that occurred on the very first day he arrived at the Tower.
The magic at the Golden Tower required rituals. Therefore, they often carried special chalks to draw circles or staves engraved with rituals. However, the performance he showed on his first day was enough to turn the Tower upside down.
“How did you perform the transmutation? There shouldn’t have been any transmutation circles.”
“Well, there’s a circle here. On my heart.”
He pointed to his heart.
At first, the mages didn’t understand what he meant, but after his explanation, they were left speechless.
He had used his blood vessels and heart as geometric shapes.
He had drawn a transmutation circle on his own body, using his arms or legs as the outer circles and the chambers of his heart as the inner circles.
Where did you come up with such an idea? Did the Tower Master teach you?
“I just did it and it worked.”
The Tower Master and the elders realized from this statement that Allen Price was a sensory genius.
He continued to present brilliant ideas thereafter.
“Do you really have to convert solid-liquid-solid every time when changing forms?”
“It’s easier to manage the shape that way.”
“Couldn’t you just change it while in a solid state?”
“If it were that easy, we would have done it long ago. Don’t just talk—show me how you did it.”
“I felt a resistance during the transformation, so I poured some mana into it.”
“You adjusted the elastic modulus…!!!”
Of course, he didn’t know what he had created.
It was half intuition and half luck, so he couldn’t explain it to others.
Thus, the discovery he made had to be proven by the Tower’s chief mages (graduate students), but there was no reason to undervalue his achievements.
Naturally, it was regrettable that he didn’t understand how great his discovery was, nor could he prove it.
Since he couldn’t understand or prove it, he couldn’t be given the position of an elder who needed to teach others.
However, he could certainly be treated as an honorary direct subordinate by the Tower Master.
Aily was selected as his mentee by the Tower Master’s intention.
When she happened to encounter him in the corridor and demonstrated her ability to interpret Allen’s words well, she was assigned to him.
As the Tower Master intended, her ideas were somewhat lacking, but she was exceptionally skilled at theorizing Allen’s genius.
“Is a catalyst a substance that helps with alchemy?”
“Yes, you can understand it that way.”
“So, is it faster to transmute using a catalyst or to perform alchemy directly without one?”
“It’s obviously faster to do it directly, if you don’t have a pre-prepared catalyst.”
“Really? That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“I find that transmuting a catalyst and then using it speeds things up much more.”
“Wait a moment, could you show me?”
That was the discovery of ‘Cross Transmutation,’ which shook the Golden School.
Of course, as always, the mages were not pleased with Aily, who got the chance to monopolize Allen’s theory.
Regardless of her talent, the fact that she monopolized the opportunity was enough to ignite jealousy.
But Allen was a sensory genius in many ways.
If there were any mages trying to sow discord between Aily and him, or to frame her—
“I request a match.”
“What does that mean?”
“Follow me to the underground training hall.”
A mage dragged to the underground was either reformed the next day or disappeared without a trace.
At that time, the nickname he earned was ‘The Golden Predator.’
Afterward, he presented Aily with several new theories and then vanished from the Tower.
When he disappeared, surprisingly, the people in the Tower remained calm.
Given that Allen was such an unpredictable person, it was not unusual for him to stop by.
There was no need to make a fuss just because his whereabouts were unknown; he was too busy to come to the Tower.
His bloodline was connected to the Tower and his talent was related to it, so they assumed he would return eventually.
Aily, too, thought she might meet him again if fate allowed and focused on theorizing the ideas he left behind.
By the time she had theorized all his ideas, she had unexpectedly become an elder.
Despite her young age, her achievements were too impressive to be ranked merely with the direct subordinates.
The Tower was such a closed community that outsiders were not well-informed, but among the mages, she was now being considered as a potential future Tower Master.
She looked at the man who had changed her fate.
When she first joined the Tower, she had often been described as resembling a golem.
Though she had a good memory for theory, her ideas were considered lacking, and her limits were clear.
However, Allen had directed her talent in a different direction.
He had elevated her to the position of a future elder, a role she should have remained a trainee for her whole life.
This indifferent man would never know the achievements he had left behind.
Even if he did find out, he would likely dismiss it as Aily’s accomplishment rather than his own.
“Well, I’m not inclined to be overly indebted either.”
She also had her own duties at the Academy, and she wasn’t in a position to focus solely on repaying a debt.
Moreover, the more he tried to repay a favor, the more he would likely refuse.
Thus, ironically, the best way to repay him fully was to repay him appropriately.
After all, they would be seeing each other often at the Academy in the future, so there was no need to rush.
Soon, they arrived at their respective classrooms.
Before saying goodbye to Allen, she suddenly became curious.
Thinking back, aside from the mages Allen had helped at the Golden Tower, there were also those who had requested duels with him.
When she asked those who had fought him about their experiences, they only responded with a wry smile—
“They were completely powerless.”
It was so overwhelming that it was impossible not to recall the relationship between predator and prey.
Since she had never fought Allen or seen a fight, she was very curious about his combat abilities.
At the time, she had been too intimidated and afraid of awkward relations to request a duel, but not anymore.
Now that she was an elder and nearly the strongest in the Golden Tower, excluding the Tower Master, she thought it might make for an interesting match.
So, instead of a farewell, she said something else before he entered the classroom.
“Senior.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have time for lunch later?”
“A lot. I was planning to eat with a friend on the other side, so I’ll be lonely.”
He asked with a pleased expression.
“Honestly, your expression is so straightforward.”
He was probably dreaming of something like youthful romance.
While the idea that the target was her wasn’t too unpleasant, she felt sorry that what she had to offer was far from anything romantic.
It was, in fact, closer to crimson.
“Then, could you have a duel with me during lunch?”
“Please, give it your all if you can.”
As Aily’s final words ended, Allen’s expression noticeably soured.
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