Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 20-21

Chapter 20: The Arrogance of the High Nobility

Several days passed after that. I still never saw Selene after school, and before I knew it, I found myself stopping by the clubroom.

“Oh, Azoth. What brings you to the clubroom?”

Sasha-senpai called out to me.

“I was wondering if Selene had come here.”

Sasha-senpai looked at my face for a moment, then lowered her gaze as if thinking about something.

“Selene hasn’t told you anything?”

“No, nothing in particular.”

“I see…”

Then a female student entered the clubroom.

“Azoth, Professor Schmidt is calling for you. Come with me to his laboratory.”

The girl was an upper-year student who belonged to Professor Schmidt’s seminar. Apparently, she had gone to my classroom to call me, and after being told I might be here, she came all the way to the clubroom to get me. I decided to go with her to the laboratory.

“Do you know a third-year upper-class student named Howard Sealing?”

“I met him once in the magic training building. He unilaterally told us we were forbidden from using it.”

“In fact, he submitted an official request to the academy regarding that matter, and the academy accepted it.”

According to Professor Schmidt, the one who accepted it was a magic instructor named Bella Schaup, a person who had always shown blatant favoritism toward Howard and the other upper-class students. Several instructors, including Professor Schmidt, had opposed accepting the request, but Professor Schaup forced it through, and the demand was approved.

“The ban on using the magic training building applies not only to you, but to every first-year student in the knight class.”

“No way!”

If it had only affected us, we might have been able to manage somehow. But if the entire first-year knight class was involved, it would cause trouble for everyone. I felt guilty, but at the same time, I thought it was ridiculous that such selfish behavior could be allowed just because they were high-ranking nobles.

The knight academy was fundamentally a kingdom institution meant to train knights who would support the future of the Argent Kingdom. Anything that undermined that purpose should not have been tolerated, even from high-ranking nobles. While I burned with anger at Howard’s absurd behavior, Professor Schmidt began speaking calmly.

“Azoth, do you know what the knight academy in the royal capital is like?”

“No, not at all.”

“Until a few years ago, I was an instructor at the Argent Knight Academy in the capital.”

According to the professor, the knight academy in the royal capital had an extremely strong class consciousness. High-ranking nobles of count rank and above, including royalty, held absolute power, while middle-ranking nobles were nothing more than hangers-on and did not even have the right to speak.

When using school facilities, high-ranking nobles were always prioritized, and middle-ranking nobles were effectively unable to use them at all. Because of that, children of nobles who wanted a proper knight education did not enroll in the royal capital’s Argent Knight Academy. Instead, they chose either the Blonmarch School for magic or the Fisher School for swordsmanship.

The only middle-ranking nobles attending the capital’s knight academy were those ordered by their parents to act as attendants for their lord’s children. Apparently, no lower-ranking nobles were enrolled there at all. Because of that, the school’s educational standard kept falling, and it served no purpose beyond being a social venue for nobles.

That was why, the professor explained, accepting Howard’s request meant this school might become just like the Argent Knight Academy.

“I will also work to have this request withdrawn, but for the time being, I intend to make the training facilities in my laboratory and those of several colleagues available to you.”

“Thank you for your consideration.”

I thanked Professor Schmidt and left the laboratory.

While feeling angry at Howard, Hardin, and the others, I remembered that the group of five upper-class students who had been pestering Selene had also ended up quitting the dungeon club. They had apparently been nearly useless during the new-student welcome dungeon and had a terrible time. They had not joined because they wanted adventure in the first place, and since Selene, their real target, had not shown any interest in them at all, their motivation probably collapsed.

On the other hand, I had completely settled into the dungeon club, and I still went dungeon adventuring with the upperclassmen after that. Dan had gotten a taste for treasure hunting in our first dungeon and became completely hooked on it. He invited Cain, Marl, and the upperclassmen too, heading into dungeons on weekends like a part-time adventurer.

Meanwhile, Neon and I actively accepted monster subjugation quests and worked on strengthening our agility. That was because we were prioritizing complete mastery of that ancient magic, 【Ultra-High-Speed Perception Release】. The effects of our training were gradually showing, and now we could completely dodge several agile warwolves in close combat.

“There are still plenty of things to worry about, but right now I should only focus on getting stronger.”

After leaving Professor Schmidt’s laboratory, I headed for the swordsmanship training facility. Today, I planned to get that perception magic to settle properly into my body, and I would have a mock battle with Neon.

I told Neon that I had failed to find Selene after all, but she did not seem very interested and urged me to start the mock battle already.

“Fine. Come at me.”

The moment we began, Neon’s full-power sword came swinging down from overhead. It was sharp. I barely perceived its path and dodged by the thinnest margin. Following the momentum of that evasive movement, I swung my sword upward from below along the shortest diagonal line, aiming for Neon’s torso.

There was no wasted movement. I’ve got her. That was what I thought, but she dodged neatly to the right, and my sword cut through empty air.

…Neon had improved too.

We both unleashed sword strikes at top speed, but we still barely read each other’s sword paths, and our blades continued slicing nothing but air. The exchange dragged on, with a single mistake likely to become decisive, and our battle of missed strikes began to turn into a contest of endurance.

If it came to that, stamina would decide the outcome. Once fatigue accumulated, even if we could track the sword path with our eyes, our bodies would no longer keep up, and we would fail to dodge. That was the opening I had to aim for.

We had already been clashing for thirty minutes, but Neon’s stamina was much higher than I expected, and her movements were not slowing down. If anything, I was the one in trouble. Neon’s movements were getting harder to follow, and it felt like her speed was increasing at this point.

I don’t want to lose to her of all people. Damn it.

My strength and willpower were both nearing their limits, so I decided to take a gamble. With everything I had, I brought my sword down from overhead in a full-force strike aimed at Neon.

Neon matched my attack by stepping in hard and driving a sharp horizontal slash straight at me.

Claaaang!

Our swords collided head-on. The impact blew both of us in opposite directions, and we collapsed onto the floor on our backs. I was completely out of breath. After that blow, I could not stand anymore. Neon and I lay spread-eagled on the ground, breathing hard through our shoulders.

But the other students who had been watching the entire mock battle were completely creeped out by our high-speed exchange.

“What the hell is with their speed? That’s not student-level anymore.”

“I just hope I don’t get matched against either of them in the midterm swordsmanship ranking tournament.”

Chapter 21: The Unpopular Alliance

“Hey, hey, after school today, why don’t we all hold a study session for the midterm exams?”

Marl made the suggestion during lunch one day, as if the idea had just popped into her head now that midterms were closing in.

“A study session, huh? I’m bad at classroom subjects, so that’d help me a lot.”

Cain seemed to be in favor of it.

“Then it’s decided. What are we studying today?”

Dan asked Marl, and she tilted her head a little.

“Social studies, maybe?”

“Want me to teach you?”

“Dan is… a little worrying, so I think I’ll have Azoth teach me.”

“Oh, is that right?”

Marl had absolutely no restraint when it came to Dan. Watching her act like that, I said,

“If I’m fine with you, I’ll teach you as much as you need.”

“Thanks, Azoth.”

Marl smiled brightly, but Neon immediately cut in from the side.

“Don’t do that, Marl. Azoth’s explanations are way too detailed and hard to understand, so I’ll teach you instead.”

“Huh? Neon, you’ll teach me too? Then I’ve got flowers in both hands.”

“Putting Neon aside, I really don’t think I count as a flower…”

After school, we stayed behind in Class B’s classroom and began our study session. For the time being, we gathered the desks near my seat and pushed them together.

Following our usual seating order, Marl sat to my right, while Dan flipped his desk around and ended up across from me. As for Neon,

“Everyone, sorry, but these girls want to join the study session too.”

He came over while leading a group of female students with him. I said,

“Of course they can join, but… wait, isn’t that every girl in the class?”

More than a month had passed since enrollment, and the girls in our class had gradually gathered around Neon until, at last, a Neon fan club had officially formed. At this point, every girl in the class except Marl was a member.

When they heard about the study session, they pestered Neon because they wanted to join as well. As a result, every girl in the class, including Marl, who had suggested the whole thing in the first place, ended up gathering for the study session.

The truth was that this fan club had a hidden purpose. It was actually a mutual-aid organization created to stop Marl, the prettiest girl in the class, from getting together with Neon, the silver-haired noble prince. Aside from me and the members themselves, nobody knew the truth.

And then, on top of that, another secret group that had quietly formed inside the class revealed itself for the first time.

“This is bull. You guys get a study session and monopolize every girl in the class? I’m jealous, Dan.”

A bitter complaint suddenly came from one of the boys in class.

“All the girls are after Neon, so your situation isn’t that different from mine…”

When Dan replied that way, the boys seemed to agree and sighed.

“Now that you mention it, yeah. In that case, I’ve got a proposal for you two, Dan and Azoth.”

“A proposal?”

“Yeah. We’ll let you two join our Unpopular Alliance. Why don’t you study with us?”

“I don’t want to join an alliance like that. Don’t lump me in with you guys.”

The Unpopular Alliance. Since every girl in the class was always stuck to Neon, the leftover boys had gathered together and somehow created an organization like this. Apparently, it had no hidden purpose in particular.

Those boys had heard that a study session would be held in this classroom today, so even after school ended, they stayed in the room and waited the whole time. Once the study session looked like it was about to begin, the boys from the alliance swarmed around us and started studying on their own.

Looking around, it felt like almost everyone in the class had stayed behind.

And so the study session began. Neon’s original plan had apparently been to forcibly steal the seat beside me and prevent Marl from getting close, but the fan club girls blocked him, and in the end, he was surrounded by female students a little distance away from us.

Cain arrived late after that.

“This class is the same as ever. The girls are swarming around Neon, and the leftover boys are gathering in one place.”

Saying that, Cain sat beside Dan, across from Marl.

“Depending on how you look at it, you could also say every boy in the class has gathered around Marl.”

When Cain added that, Marl gave a small victorious fist pump.

“Now that you mention it, that’s true! I’m super popular.”

Dan immediately shot back with an exasperated look, “What part of this makes you popular?”

These two were actually pretty close, weren’t they?

In the end, I was the one who taught Marl, but Cain and Dan apparently had a lot of parts they did not understand either, so they kept asking me questions. Neon seemed bothered by what we were doing and had been glancing this way for a while now.

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while.”

Marl suddenly whispered into my ear.

“What exactly was that earth magic you used back in the poisonous insect swamp?”

“That… might be a little complicated, so I’m not sure I can explain it properly.”

“Is it something you can’t tell me?”

Marl looked at me anxiously, and I had never been good at dealing with that kind of face.

“All right. I’ll try explaining it.”

After that, I explained to Marl that earth was not an element, but a mixture made from many different elements, and that I had activated magic by imagining only certain specific elements contained within the soil.

But Marl said,

“What are you even talking about? Fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, light, and darkness are the seven elements that form the roots of the world, and everyone knows those match the attributes of magic. Then how many elements are there according to you, Azoth?”

“More than a hundred have already been discovered.”

“If there are that many, then they aren’t really elements or anything, are they?”

…Well, normally, that was how anyone would react.

“Then what were the elements you made the other day?”

“Sodium and potassium.”

“Those are element names? I’ve never heard of them. Is this like, ‘the super-strong element I came up with,’ or something?”

Please stop looking at me with those eyes that say, Azoth is still such a child.

Fine. I had no choice but to attack this from a slightly different angle.

“If you examine soil closely, you’ll find all kinds of stones, sand, broken-down dead leaves, insect droppings, and other things mixed into it. So soil itself isn’t an element.”

“Then you just remove the dead leaves and droppings. What’s left is soil.”

“…”

“More importantly, wasn’t the magic you used back then actually Explosion?”

“If I fired something like that, the cave would collapse, and I don’t have enough magic power to cast it anyway.”

“Oh, I get it! You added the fire element to the earth element and dropped it into the swamp. As expected of someone with two attributes. Not bad.”

Yeah, explaining this was impossible.

I got tired of it and said,

“Yeah, something like that.”

“I see. Then how does my Pulse Laser work?”

The questions were still going?

“Uh… light has the nature of waves, and if you mix waves of every color of light with the right timing, their peaks line up perfectly and become a huge burst of light for an instant.”

“There’s no way light is a wave.”

Yeah, that was what people normally said.

“Lightning keeps shining for a while, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What happens if you squeeze all of that light into a single instant?”

“It gets incredibly bright. Ah!”

“That’s basically it.”

“I understand that much, but does any kind of light become like that?”

“No. The light from a lantern or normal Lightning has broken-up waves that are all over the place.”

That was right. Marl’s Lightning was clearly different from the Lightning I knew. It had the same coherent nature as a laser, but the question was how to explain that to her.

“Huh? My Lightning isn’t normal?”

“Right. Marl’s Lightning has all of its light lined up into one long, clean strand. If I had to compare it to something, it’s like the beautiful long hair of a princess.”

“A princess’s long hair…”

“That’s how beautifully ordered and special your Lightning is.”

When I said that, Marl’s cheeks turned bright red, and she looked down. Meanwhile, I was very satisfied with myself for successfully explaining the coherence of light.

A giant pulse produced by aligning the phase of every spectrum. The Fourier transform behind that was such a difficult calculation that it would make Neon angry, and getting Marl to understand it would be an impossible task.

When I thought of it that way, maybe it really was amazing that Neon had managed to understand mathematics and physics. All that time I spent teaching him one-on-one since we were little had paid off.

“Hey, Azoth.”

Dan quietly spoke to me.

“What?”

“You should probably stop whisper-flirting with Marl soon.”

“I’m only teaching her. I’m not flirting or anything.”

“Exactly. If this looks like flirting to you, is that just the jealousy of unpopular boys?”

“Gngh… Marl, you little…”

As if to tease Dan, Marl hugged my arm.

Crack!

A terrifying sound came from the direction where Neon was sitting, but it was scary, so I decided not to turn around.

“That’s not what I mean. Look behind me.”

“Huh?”

When I looked behind Dan, for some reason, the entire Unpopular Alliance was glaring at me like I was their parents’ killer.

“…And here we thought Azoth was one of our comrades in the Unpopular Alliance.”

“These Ferrum brothers are both enemies of men!”

“No, Azoth stole Marl. His crime is far heavier than Neon’s.”

“No, no, wait a second, you guys! Aren’t you misunderstanding something? There’s nothing going on between Marl and me.”

“If nothing is going on and you’re still flirting that hard, what the hell does that even mean?”

“I’m not flirting! I’m just teaching her! Marl, you tell them too.”

“Azoth is right. We aren’t flirting.”

“See? Marl says so too.”

“I’m just waiting until Azoth chooses me.”

Clatter, clatter!

At the center of the classroom, Neon tried to charge toward us with an absolutely terrifying look on his face, but the girls in the class blocked him, leaving him unable to move.

Scary…

When I instinctively looked away from Neon, the Unpopular Alliance on this side was trembling with frustration.

Why did you have to say something extra that caused such an obvious misunderstanding, Marl-san…?

The Unpopular Alliance, who were probably shedding tears of blood in their hearts, somehow endured it and forcefully changed the topic.

“S-Speaking of which, the second-years’ practical magic tournament during the midterms is really moe, right?”

“Not burning hot, but moe?”

When I asked that, one of the boys began speaking with all the passion of a man who had been waiting for this exact moment.

“The top magic battle among the second-years is, unbelievably, a miracle matchup between the academy’s two great beauties.”

“That’s right! A direct battle between Lady Flu and Lady Selene!”

Lady Flu was apparently the shortened name for Fluorine Aureus, the student council vice president and the daughter of a count from one of the most prestigious noble families in the Kingdom of Argent.

“Which side do you support?”

“Lady Selene, of course, good sir.”

“Lady Flu has a flawless, perfectly sculpted beauty and a fully mature figure. She’s the strongest magician, famous enough to be called the Ice Witch.”

“But her status is way too high. She’s a flower so far out of reach that we can never lay a hand on her.”

“She’s the student council president’s fiancée too…”

“On that point, Lady Selene is an unbelievably beautiful girl on the same level as Lady Flu, but she’s in the knight class, just like us.”

“And even though she’s in the knight class, she’s evenly matched with Lady Flu, a high-ranking noble.”

“That is why we, the Unpopular Alliance, support Lady Selene with everything we have!”

The boys of the Unpopular Alliance were getting excited over Selene, but this topic was incredibly dangerous. When I looked toward Dan, he avoided my eyes with a look that said, Handle this yourself.

I turned my gaze toward Cain, hoping he could somehow do something, but Cain was clutching his stomach and laughing his head off.

No good. Nobody looked like they were going to save me.

Marl was still hugging my right arm, and as for Neon… I did not want to look in that direction because it was scary.

If they found out Selene was my fiancée, there would be no place left for me in this classroom. Terrified by that thought, all I could do was wait desperately for the study session to end.