“Ahh. This is boring.”
Hermoa Entiro muttered softly as she leaned back against the chair’s backrest.
She had been forcibly dragged out to the classroom to attend the special class.
Hermoa didn’t like that fact at all.
It wasn’t as if she had refused to attend other classes, so why did she have to be forcibly assigned to the special class?
To begin with, she disliked the very system of the special class itself. A class that practically assigned students by force without caring about their will—she couldn’t see what meaning such a system even had.
Until recently, Elisa had taught it personally, but since she was the headmaster and constantly busy, she quit soon enough.
For a moment, Hermoa thought this irritating class was finally over—but apparently not.
The special class had resumed with a new instructor.
‘I thought she quit because she was exhausted. Did she actually find someone suitable?’
To be honest, she couldn’t say she wasn’t curious.
Wasn’t the special class something even other instructors had given up on, to the point where the headmaster herself had been carving time out of her schedule to teach it?
If Elisa had invited someone to teach in her place, then whoever was coming this time had to be an exceptional mage.
Did she recruit Archmage Clinton Rothschild from the Imperial family?
If not him, then perhaps a mage of equal rank to the headmaster—a Lexuror-class mage?
She’d heard rumors that Caroline Monarch had been a contemporary of hers. Surely it wasn’t her?
Whoever it was, calling such a person in just to teach six students was absurdly inefficient.
‘And honestly. It’s not like I don’t attend my other classes properly. I’m nothing like those other idiots who refuse lessons altogether.’
Hermoa’s real dissatisfaction lay in the fact that she had been lumped together with the other students in this class.
Picking fights.
Openly clashing with instructors.
Refusing to attend class.
She acknowledged their talent, but in every other respect, they were unqualified.
From Hermoa’s perspective, they were nothing but problem children—and cases she had no desire to associate with.
If rumors spread that she was close to students like that, it would interfere with her path toward success.
Hermoa’s goal was to make full use of her talent, become an outstanding mage, and live an extremely successful life.
She was highly calculating and power-oriented, but she felt no shame about her ambitions.
‘Either way, I should at least find out who this new special class instructor is.’
As that thought crossed her mind, the front door of the lecture hall slid open with a rattling sound.
Hermoa focused all her senses on the instructor stepping up to the podium.
And she couldn’t help but widen her eyes.
‘Huh? That person is......’
It was the handsome man who had gauged her talent just by glancing at her when they passed each other.
She never imagined that he would be the newly appointed special class instructor.
Still, Hermoa felt puzzled. At the very least, she was familiar with the personal profiles of most famous mages.
Naturally, she had assumed that a well-known figure—someone she would recognize—would be appointed as the instructor.
But Ludger was not in her memory.
If someone that good-looking existed, there was no way she wouldn’t remember his face the moment she saw it. Of that, she was certain.
Regardless, Ludger, standing on the podium, opened his mouth.
“Nice to meet you. I am Ludger Cherish, the instructor newly assigned to oversee the special class.”
Ludger? Ludger Cherish?
Hermoa rolled the name around in her mouth several times. It sounded vaguely familiar.
Soon, she recalled that the name belonged to a teacher who, three years ago, had even risen to the position of Director of Planning at Seorn.
‘That person?’
Hermoa knew of Ludger.
She had never seen his face, but she had heard the rumors.
They said there had been an exceptionally outstanding educator at Seorn.
Someone remarkable both outwardly and inwardly, who had earned the respect of countless students.
Of course, the students he had taught back then had already graduated, and Ludger himself had quit due to injury, so that reputation had not continued.
No matter how famous someone was, if they didn’t periodically reinforce their image, they were inevitably forgotten by the public.
In that sense, the fact that Hermoa could even vaguely recall his name proved that he had once possessed considerable renown.
‘Even if someone like that has returned... he’s teaching the special class?’
That unsettled and worried her.
Someone with a gap of over three years was now responsible for teaching them—not ordinary Seorn students, but students so exceptionally talented that they required separate instruction.
Unaware of Hermoa’s thoughts, Ludger surveyed the students from the podium.
“So few.”
A quiet murmur offered at their first meeting.
Yet there wasn’t a single person present who failed to hear it.
Even if no one was chatting loudly, the lecture hall itself was a spacious room capable of accommodating at least fifty people.
And yet that murmur pierced everyone’s ears like an arrow, because of the mana carried in his voice.
“Where are the other two?”
Ludger pointed out that only four students were present in the classroom.
According to the roster Elisa had given him, the special class had six students.
But only four were seated—meaning two had skipped class.
“Heh. Why don’t you just ignore those losers?”
The one who replied was a delinquent-looking young man with short-cropped red hair.
He was sitting crookedly, one leg propped up on the desk.
Hermoa frowned at the sight of him.
‘Carlo. Honestly, so uncouth.’
Carlo.
Short red hair cut in a sports style, sharp features, and subtly visible muscles.
He was the very image of a stereotypical thug.
Among the students, there were even rumors that before enrolling here, he’d been involved in shady business in some back alley.
But his magical talent was real. The fact that a commoner like him, who had never received proper education, was openly sitting in the special class was proof enough.
“More importantly, you’re the new instructor? You don’t really look like someone qualified to teach us.”
The problem was Carlo’s personality.
His insolent tone toward someone he had just met, that attitude—he showed no respect at all, even though his opponent was a teacher.
He was especially notorious for hating nobles, and since enrolling at Seorn, he had already been involved in more than eight fights.
He was, quite literally, a mad dog obsessed with brawling.
“What do you think? Don’t you all agree with me?”
Carlo tried to draw agreement from the others, but the remaining three didn’t even respond, as if they didn’t want to get involved.
Carlo clicked his tongue at that.
“Hey, Robert. What do you think?”
The one who flinched and shrugged at having his name called was a student far larger and taller than Carlo.
With a cold, sharp-looking image and an imposing height, he was probably bigger than most adults.
Yet despite that build, his inner nature seemed timid enough that merely being addressed by Carlo made his shoulders twitch.
“I, I don’t really know.”
“Tch. You’re a man, have some guts. Anyway, we don’t know who you are, and we don’t really want to attend your class, so why don’t you just gloss over things.”
Ludger stared straight at Carlo as he spoke boldly.
Carlo didn’t avert his gaze. On the contrary, he glared back provocatively, as if challenging him.
“As it’s our first meeting, I’ll let your insolent behavior slide this once. What matters right now is finding the two who haven’t joined the class yet.”
Carlo curled the corner of his lips, convinced that Ludger was intimidated.
“Oh, really? Are you sure that’s okay? Those two won’t be easy to find, even if you try. They won’t be in the dorms, and they love running around and hiding all over the place.”
He added, as if as an afterthought, that trying to find them would probably mean today’s class was a lost cause.
The remark sounded irritating, but it wasn’t entirely wrong.
Ludger replied with a faint smile.
“You don’t need to worry. I’ll bring them back within three minutes.”
Carlo frowned.
How was he supposed to find the two chronic truants—students even other instructors had given up on—and bring them back within three minutes?
If he was going to bluff, he should at least make it believable. Or was he just trying not to look weak in front of them?
At that moment, Carlo felt something strange.
‘What was that?’
Without realizing it, he glanced around.
For an instant, it felt as if something had swept across his body.
Carlo’s intuition was sharp—fitting for a talented student.
But there were two people who reacted far more violently than he did.
One of them was Hermoa.
“Ugh.”
She was a student with synesthetic perception, someone who felt mana as a tactile sensation on her skin.
Naturally, she could feel the mana Ludger was subtly releasing.
Goosebumps erupted across her body, her fine hairs standing on end.
For a fleeting moment, Hermoa felt as if she had plunged into the deep sea and then been dragged back onto land.
Another student reacted just as strongly.
It was the student who had been slumped over the desk, asleep the entire time.
The female student who hadn’t lifted her head when Ludger entered, when he introduced himself, or even when Carlo provoked him—
the moment Ludger released his mana, she reacted faster than anyone.
She snapped upright, staring at Ludger with wide, round eyes.
Ludger caught sight of her gaze—and of the long ears protruding from between her dark brown hair.
‘As expected. Everyone present noticed and reacted in their own way. Their talent really is exceptional.’
An elf student, Elmarra Poale.
He knew her profile as well, but right now, finding the two absent students took priority.
What Ludger had just done was simple.
He had scattered his mana as thinly and widely as possible.
And on a truly vast scale.
The range he covered was the entirety of Seorn.
So vast that it blanketed the entire campus, built on an enormous tract of land far removed from the city.
At the same time, he finely tuned all the scattered mana, pinpointing the locations of the two students whose signatures he remembered.
Finding them wasn’t difficult. Unless they had burrowed underground or flown into the sky, there was no way they could escape his grasp as long as they were within Seorn.
Hwooooom.
Mana began to gather on both sides of Ludger, who stood on the podium.
As its density increased, it took on a blue glow, swirling in the air and forming a vortex.
The students could only watch the scene in silence.
The violently rotating, galaxy-like spiral of mana was soon stained black from its center.
Before long, the vortex turned pitch-black—and then abruptly spat out two people from its core.
Because they fell from a spot with a slight height difference, the two students landed hard on the floor.
One was a white-haired boy with a shaggy cut, wearing glasses so thick they nearly obscured his eyes.
The other was an albino girl who emitted a faint glow on her own, looking four or five years younger than her peers.
As the two students who had been hiding somewhere while refusing class suddenly appeared out of thin air, everyone looked stunned.
The same went for the two students themselves, who had been forcibly spatially transferred into the lecture hall by Ludger.
They seemed completely unable to understand why they were here, or how they had arrived.
“W-what is this—”
As everyone stood frozen in shock, Ludger retrieved all the mana he had scattered and spoke.
“You’re late for class. Go and take your seats. There are no assigned seats, so sit wherever you like.”
The two truants flinched when they saw Ludger.
The bespectacled student seemed about to say something, but then clamped his mouth shut and quietly moved to an empty seat.
The faintly glowing young girl, however, did not.
She stared at Ludger with a frightened expression, then suddenly scampered °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° toward the door with quick, pattering steps.
It looked like she intended to escape as fast as possible.
The moment she slid the door open and ran outside—
She found herself back inside the lecture hall again.
“...?”
Unable to understand why she couldn’t get out, the girl ran through the open door once more.
And once again, she ended up back inside the classroom.
“I do not permit skipping class.”
Ludger said this to the pale white girl who stared at him in disbelief.
“Go and sit somewhere appropriate. We need to begin the lesson.”