50. A Noble Soul (3)
Bang—!
At the loud sound of someone striking a desk, Eizel jerked awake in a panic.
Her head was still foggy and her vision blurred.
Only then did she realize she had been nodding off.
“Hey, are you sleeping?”
Forcing her heavy eyes open and bringing her vision into focus, she saw Flame’s brightly smiling face.
“…H-huh? No?”
“Trying to pretend you weren’t asleep. Meditation period is basically nap time anyway.”
“Ah…”
Only then did Eizel realize that the lecture she was currently sitting through had been meditation class.
Normally, she would have fallen into a truly deep meditative state, but these past few days she had been so tired that she could not concentrate properly during meditation class and kept drifting off.
Still, in a class where meditation and sleeping hardly looked any different, it was not something she would get scolded for.
“Here, look at this. I’m busy, so I’m heading out.”
“Huh? Wait—”
Flame casually tossed down a magazine, then strode out into the hallway with her friends in a hurry.
Tilting her head, Eizel looked down at it.
[Arcanium Magic Magazine]
‘Ah.’
Come to think of it, something like this did exist.
The five great prestigious schools of Arcanium often carried out club activities together, and Arcanium Magic Magazine was the joint newspaper club formed by the magic journalism departments of all five schools.
She had heard there were many other clubs that also collaborated and interacted this way besides the newspaper club, but Eizel had never had much interest in that side of things, so she did not know much about it.
‘As expected.’
After flipping through the magazine briefly, Eizel let a faint smile show.
Witch, witch, witch.
It was all about the witch.
Whether because the student reporters wanted to show that even without being professional journalists they could still cover a story properly, they seemed to have run all over town interviewing people, even securing statements from professors and, unbelievably, Stella’s Knights as well.
Most of the content, unsurprisingly, centered around questions of how Baek Yuseol had managed to hunt the witch, along with praise for the achievement itself.
But in a distinctly mage-like way, there was also a striking section that fundamentally considered why witches still remained in the modern age.
Still, perhaps because student reporters had their limits, the core parts of the incident were all simplified.
It seemed they had no idea whatsoever that Flame and Eizel, not to mention the Myeolamdan, had helped behind the scenes.
And no information had been written about the witch’s identity being a successor of the Last Witch either.
So while reading it with the relaxed attitude of skimming a post-incident follow-up, Eizel found one section that bothered her a little.
‘Hm?’
It was an interview with one of Stella’s knights.
Compared to the others, he spoke rather poorly of Baek Yuseol.
He had clearly tried to phrase it as prettily as possible, but it was painfully obvious that he did not think well of him at all.
‘Baek Yuseol acts independently, is self-centered in his thinking, and is unsuited to collective society.’
Using her own reading ability to interpret it as much as possible, Eizel arrived at the conclusion that the statement more or less carried that meaning.
It seemed Baek Yuseol had really managed to earn Stella’s Knights’ resentment.
Had something happened?
‘How did Baek Yuseol come to conduct a joint investigation with Stella’s Knights?’
That was one of the questions printed in the article, and it was also something Eizel herself had been curious about.
She had always thought there must be some point of contact, since Stella’s Knight Commander Arain had clearly shown a strong interest in Baek Yuseol before.
But she had never expected Stella’s Knights to move alongside a mere first-year cadet.
Yet the outcome did not seem to have been especially good, if he had not only earned Stella’s Knights’ dislike but had even generated news like this:
‘Baek Yuseol acquires temporary Stella knighthood, only to give it up himself. Why?’
Eizel’s eyes widened, and she read that line again.
‘He gave up his knighthood immediately?’
She had already heard the rumors all over campus that General Knight Commander Arain had personally granted Baek Yuseol temporary knight privileges.
But to give up that status as soon as the incident was over…
there should have been absolutely no reason for that.
‘Why?’
No matter how she thought about it, she simply could not understand.
There could be no more glorious position for a magic warrior than being one of Stella’s knights.
And on top of that, it had been none other than Knight Commander Arain himself who had granted Baek Yuseol temporary knighthood.
If he had only maintained that status until graduation, a fairly high-ranking position would surely have been guaranteed.
And given that he had successfully completed the witch-hunting mission this time, he would likely have enjoyed enormous benefits from then on as well.
And yet he had thrown it all away without hesitation…
which meant it was perfectly reasonable to interpret the position of Stella knight, for Baek Yuseol, as nothing more than a temporary tool used to solve the immediate incident before him.
‘…Though I suppose, for a regressor.’
No.
Rather, perhaps because he was a regressor, he could make such a decision so easily.
For someone like Baek Yuseol, who had lived through countless lives, wealth and honor must no longer mean anything.
Since there was not enough time to read the whole magazine to the end, Eizel put it into her bag and stepped out of the classroom.
The hallway was unusually loud and chaotic, but lately there had been many situations like this because everyone had been preparing for their club performance assignments, so she did not think much of it.
‘I wonder what our club’s going to do…?’
A gourmet club, of all things, already seemed somewhat unsuited to presenting anything meaningful for a club performance assignment.
Baek Yuseol had insisted he had a method and had been preparing some bizarre-sounding plan called the “Gourmet Roadview Project,” but she had no idea whether it was going well.
As someone who simply found everything delicious, Eizel honestly did not even understand what the word gourmet was supposed to mean, so she could not help feeling suspicious of whatever he was preparing.
On top of that, after the deeply unpleasant experience she had had at the Witch Restaurant not long ago, she had become somewhat skeptical of the very word gourmet itself.
‘Well… I’m sure he’ll handle it somehow.’
For now, it was probably fine to trust him and leave it to him.
Baek Yuseol was good at everything.
The entrance to the warp hall gate connecting the main tower and the satellite towers was always packed with students.
That was because the warp hall could only face one destination at a time.
Students wanting to go to place A had to gather and depart together, while those wanting to go to place B had to wait for a moment’s opening.
Usually, the first group to gather—or the largest group—was allowed through first.
Since the academy was so large and most students had never met each other before, arguments over warp hall order happened frequently.
And because of technological limitations, even the professors had found no real solution.
Of course, there were a few exceptional cases that could end such disputes immediately.
If a professor wanted to use the warp hall gate…
or if a student with overwhelming presence did.
And in this case, it was exactly the latter.
The students who had been engaged in a war of nerves over who would use the warp hall first fell silent the instant a third-year girl appeared and stepped aside.
‘Sayeran Orkan.’
With black hair and skin so pale it looked like porcelain, she had a gaze so inorganic that one instantly understood why she had earned the nickname “the living doll.”
Sayeran was the eldest daughter of Duke Orkan, one of the two great pillars of the Adolevit Kingdom, and was also famous as Princess Hong Si-hwa’s right hand.
Tok— tok—!
As Sayeran walked through the corridor, attendants followed behind her.
Every one of them was a Stella student, but each had been raised from birth with the single goal of serving House Orkan, which gave them a distinctly different air from ordinary students.
The way their eyes focused only on Sayeran was so unnatural, so chilling, that the other students instinctively kept their distance.
Woooong!!
The warp hall gate activated and switched destinations.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Sayeran waited for the warp hall to be prepared for her, even though she had arrived the latest.
“Ahem… Where are you headed?”
The teaching assistant managing the warp hall looked rather awkward using formal speech toward a student.
Apparently he had not been assigned to gate management very long.
But what could he do?
No matter how much they were students, he was hardly in a position to speak casually to a noble who lived high above the rest.
“…Tower 19.”
When Sayeran answered curtly, the assistant nodded and reached to adjust the warp hall.
Or rather, he was about to—
“Wait. I want to use it first. Move aside.”
—until Hong Biyeon suddenly appeared behind her.
“Switch it to Tower 13.”
Appearing alone without any attendants, Hong Biyeon crossed her arms and slightly lifted her chin as she waited.
The posture itself seemed to say, “You do not have the right to defy me,” and the assistant’s face turned pale.
‘Aaaah…’
The two girls were complete opposites.
If Sayeran’s presence inspired obedience through pure fear and dread, then Hong Biyeon inspired something more fundamental—an overwhelming sense that her commands simply had to be obeyed.
But such emotional nuances were not important to the assistant.
He was a small, ordinary person.
He had only taken on warp hall gate management as a part-time job to get into the university magic tower later.
There was no way he had the nerve to deal simultaneously with House Orkan and the Adolevit royal family.
“…I was in the middle of using it, Princess.”
At Sayeran’s displeased frown, Hong Biyeon tilted her head.
“Really? Then I’ll use it first.”
“That won’t do.”
Sayeran’s status was clearly lower than Hong Biyeon’s, but that did not mean Hong Biyeon could simply treat her however she wished.
Because Sayeran had Princess Hong Si-hwa standing firmly at her back.
“Won’t do? Why?”
At Hong Biyeon’s question, Sayeran pressed her lips shut.
If she answered bluntly, “Because I came first,” then Hong Biyeon would obviously say this:
‘Then what about all those people who got here before you?’
Sayeran knew it well enough.
She had power, and she enjoyed that power as naturally as breathing.
But she had never once been in a situation like this before.
What was one supposed to do when someone with greater power than oneself appeared and trampled over that right?
Sayeran thought.
Why was Princess Hong Biyeon acting like this all of a sudden?
The Hong Biyeon of before had been nothing more than trash with high pride and low self-worth.
A pathetic underachiever not even worth comparing to Princess Hong Si-hwa.
That coward, who used to flee in a panic rather than even dare speak to Sayeran—
she had never imagined that same girl would now come at her so openly, picking a fight.
“There’s no reason, right? Then I’ll go first.”
“…Go ahead.”
With that, Hong Biyeon naturally operated the warp hall herself and vanished in an instant.
“My lady… are you all right?”
“T-that shameless princess was incredibly rude—”
“I’ll report this separately later.”
“No need.”
Sayeran’s brow twitched unpleasantly, but only that much.
Allowing one’s emotions to be shaken by something like this was what amateurs did.
If she wished to one day seize the political world in her grasp, she needed to be able to endure humiliation on this level.
If anything, it was valuable experience.
“You still look to be in a very bad mood…”
“I’m not in a bad mood for that reason.”
Having the warp hall taken from her—that much could be brushed aside.
What had truly irritated Sayeran was something else.
Throughout the entire conversation, Hong Biyeon had been smiling clearly and brightly as though she were the sun itself.
As though something extremely good had happened to her.
And what was good for Hong Biyeon was, more often than not, something bad for Sayeran.
That alone made it impossible not to feel irritated—and the fact that she did not know what it was made it all the worse.
And during that brief moment just now, having to face that smile directly had been particularly unbearable.
‘I don’t know why, but…’
There was no need to concern herself with it immediately.
Thinking that, Sayeran stepped into the warp hall.
She was far too busy to waste time worrying over someone like Hong Biyeon, after all.
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