Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 7

Since there was still time left, we decided to hunt a few more kobolds before heading back, so we pushed deeper into the forest.

“Found them.”

Once the trees grew denser and the visibility got worse, we spotted around ten kobolds gathered in a clearing about fifty meters ahead. They still hadn’t noticed us. This time, Dan laid out the plan.

“We hit them with an ambush. Four of us, including Neon, get close and take out four of them with the opening strike. After that, Cain and I handle two each, and the two of you deal with the rest.”

“Got it.”

We used the trees for cover and closed in on the kobold pack, then dropped four of them just like we planned. After that, the fight with the remaining kobolds began.

Kobolds were small monsters, so their raw power wasn’t all that high, but they were fast as hell. They used the spring in their bodies to lunge in with fangs and claws in quick, sharp bursts, but I took my time, used the trees around me well, and watched every move carefully before slipping past each attack one by one.

At my current level, kobolds were perfect for training my dynamic vision and evasion. I didn’t attack right away. I just kept reading their movements and dodging by a hair’s breadth. Eventually, once their movements started dulling from fatigue, I finished them off cleanly.

When I looked around, everyone else seemed to have wrapped up their fights too.

“Nice work. Let’s head back to the guild.”

Even on the way out of the forest, we kept hunting any kobold groups we found, and by the time we finally made it back to the highway, the sun was already starting to dip toward evening. We dragged our tired asses down the road toward the castle town.

Neon and I had fallen a bit behind the rest when Sasha moved closer and spoke to me in a low voice.

“Azoth, you’re Selene’s fiancé, right?”

“So she told you.”

“I knew she had a fiancé within the clan, but I didn’t know the name. Still, from the way she described him, I had a feeling it might be you.”

So Selene hadn’t really been hiding it. She’d told the close friends she trusted.

“But you probably shouldn’t spread it around too much… especially not to those five. There are more than a few upper-ranking nobles who think an engagement between lower nobles is something they can crush with enough pressure.”

Sasha kept talking, her expression turning a little uneasy.

“Of course, even lower nobles serve lords of their own, and normally no noble would try to steal someone’s fiancé if it meant causing a conflict between higher-ranking houses. But Selene’s a special case. She’s got top-class magical power for our year, and on top of that, she’s gorgeous. There are definitely people who’d take the risk if it meant making her their wife… or offering her up as a lord’s concubine or mistress.”

“I see. So that’s how it is.”

“I’ve warned students with shitty manners like that before. I may not look it, but I’m a viscount’s daughter in the second-year upper class.”

“A viscount’s daughter?”

She’d hidden it well, but when I looked closely, I caught sight of the two lines on Sasha’s uniform.

Now I finally understood why our head of house had been worried. There really were upper-class students thinking about stealing my fiancée and making her their bride, or handing her over to somebody as a concubine or mistress. At the same time, it also solved another question I’d had.

“So that’s why those five never tried hitting on you. You’re seriously beautiful too, Sasha, but they knew they didn’t have a chance, so none of them even bothered.”

Now that I had sorted things out in my head, I felt weirdly relieved, and that was probably why I let the word beautiful slip out without thinking. I got a little embarrassed the second it left my mouth, but Sasha just smiled lightly, like she was humoring a younger brother.

“Heh. Thanks.”

The next second, Neon—who had been listening in silence—pulled a face and stomped hard on my foot.

“Gahhh! What the hell, Neon?!”

When we got back to the guild, we turned in the right ears of the kobolds we had killed at the counter by the back entrance and received our reward.

Forty-five kills total. The reward came to 4,500 gil.

Since Sasha said, “I was only there to accompany you,” and refused to take any money, the five of us split it evenly and each got 900 gil. If you compared one gil to Japanese yen from my previous life, it felt like roughly one hundred yen, so that meant each of us had just made an extra ninety thousand yen.

We were all getting pretty hyped, talking about how much we’d earned, when Selene came over.

“Welcome back.”

“Selene? So you got back before us.”

“Of course I did. Their quest was herb gathering. Rank F.”

Even if those five were upper-ranking nobles, their magical power was low enough that they had already been dropped from heir consideration, so they had only come to the knight academy to look for marriage partners with magic. They weren’t planning to join the order of knights in the future and were expected instead to help manage their territories as civil officials, so they apparently sucked at combat. This time too, all they had done was some child-level quest gathering herbs in the field just outside the city.

“So in the end, those idiots just dragged Selene around on a picnic.”

I let out a sigh before I could stop myself.

Once all the post-quest business at the guild was done, we all started heading back toward the student dorms together.

“Hey, you two, why don’t we have dinner in my room tonight? A little welcome party for starting school.”

Selene whispered that to Neon and me.

“Got it.”

“Though it’s not like I actually made anything. We’ll just have to buy something on the way back.”

“Yeah, figured.”

Since the three of us decided to buy dinner and head back together, we parted ways with the others there.

Neon and I went back to our own room first, washed off the sweat in the bath, and changed back into our uniforms. There was a cleaning magic tool in the room, so even the uniforms dirtied from hunting magical beasts could be cleaned right away. Then we took the food we had bought, got permission at the girls’ dorm reception desk, and entered Selene’s room.

The girls’ dorm rooms were laid out the same as ours in the boys’ dorm, but unlike us, Selene didn’t have a roommate. She seemed to be living alone. We immediately spread the food out on the table and started dinner.

“Once again, congratulations on getting into Blomark Knight Academy.”

Selene had already changed into loungewear, and maybe because she had just gotten out of the bath, faint wisps of steam still rose from her long hair. The whole atmosphere felt relaxed in a way that hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Before Selene had enrolled in the knight academy, the three of us used to spend time like this all the time. Like close siblings.

“Neon, are you really planning to keep living in the boys’ dorm? Are you seriously okay with that?”

“It’s a little late to ask that now. I’ve spent my whole life pretending to be a boy, so this much is nothing.”

“That’s only on the surface. Back home you acted like a normal girl, and now you’re living with Azoth? That’s weird.”

“It doesn’t really bother me, and Azoth doesn’t think of me as a girl anyway.”

“That can’t be true. Right, Azoth?”

It was true that it was hard for me to think of Neon as a girl, but it was also true that when she wore thin loungewear like last night, I honestly wasn’t sure where the hell I was supposed to look. Still, saying that out loud felt like a bad idea for reasons I didn’t feel like digging into.

“She’s Neon. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

The moment I said that, Neon shot me a glare.
The hell? You literally just said the same thing yourself.

Ignoring that, Selene turned a suspicious look on Neon.

“Really? Putting that aside, pretending to be a male student at the academy has to be a pain, doesn’t it?”

“Hmm… I’m fine, I think. I just try not to talk much at school, so I go with the silent pretty-boy type.”

That did not sound right at all, so I cut in without thinking.

“I’m the one constantly worried everyone’s gonna figure it out. Honestly, I’d rather not deal with this shit.”

“See? Even Azoth says so. And your body is still developing.”

“It’s fine, Big Sis Selene. If I bind myself down with underwear, I can hide my chest, and if I use the stall every time I go to the bathroom, nobody will ever figure it out.”

“Stop saying such shameless things!”

The second the conversation dropped into toilet talk, Selene snapped at Neon.

“Honestly… I think pretending to be a man is starting to get impossible no matter how you look at it. Just how much longer does Father plan to make Neon keep this up?”

I had wondered the same thing myself, and then Selene quietly said, “Father told me the preparations are almost complete. If things move quickly, he plans to settle it within the year, so Neon will probably only have to keep cross-dressing until then.”

So it really was tied to the civil war… maybe they had finally prepared enough of that new weapon.

“You two, don’t talk about anything related to our house’s knight order while you’re at the academy. Ever.”

At Selene’s warning, Hardin and Nick’s faces rose in my mind.

If civil war really was going to break out again, then how long would this peaceful academy life last? Would I end up fighting those bastards on the battlefield too?

Lost in those thoughts, I listened absentmindedly to the conversation between the sisters who had finally gotten to see each other again after so long.